5G Talent Talk with Carrie Charles (00:00)
Welcome to 5G Talent Talk. I'm Carrie Charles, your host, and I'm glad you're here today. We have got a really cool episode for you. I have with me Emir Abelhosen. He is the CEO of NetLync. And you're going to hear a lot more about NetLync in just a few minutes. So listen up. It could be something that you've never heard before, and you're going to learn a lot. Emir, thank you for joining me today. Thanks, Carrie. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you so much.

So Emir, let's talk about you first and just tell me a little bit about how you got to, you know, to where you are today and maybe a little bit about your journey in your career.

So my journey in my career is not a conventional one, but I think most entrepreneurs go through the exact same process as I find. We entrepreneurs, we like to think we're special, but we're not. We're like, you know, we all go through the same processes. I've always been a techie, even as a little kid. Parents wanted a different outcome for me on that basis. I hated school.

I really was, I was one of those kids, either I was doing really well or doing really bad. There was no in between with me. and once I finished school, I gone into, while I actually, while I was in school and in college actually, cause I was trying to fast track everything I could to get into the workplace. I ended up in film and television, completely by, by coincidence, right in the right place, right time. And actually ended up becoming a television producer for a number of years in the Vancouver film and TV industry.

So that was really interesting and it was actually a lot of fun. I got to enjoy it and I was actually doing it while I was finishing school and then I got started and I continued that for a few more years. that part of that process, again, right place, right time, I met a guy who was designing ski bindings. He was an Australian trying to figure out how to send massive CAD files back when we're still in the world of dial-up or if you have a of money, you could afford a T1 connection.

and very large files sent back and forth. And an idea came about doing file sharing. Obviously, were playing around with peer-to-peer file sharing at the time for music and video. I thought, okay, well, what if you could use it for a business application? And I started my first startup at that point. It's pretty young, very naive, but I started a company called Center Drive and we ended up building the first peer-to-peer file sharing system built actually directly within Windows Explorer.

And eventually, very shortly after, that company was acquired in different ways, but the technology ended up with Microsoft. it became part of Windows Explorer, I think for a short time, or Windows Office as well too. And following that journey, as part of that whole entire process, I ended up getting my first corporate job as through the acquisition. I worked in a global...

global marketing. I was completely pushed into the deep end very quickly, which is something that I would say is one of the things you get used to in the path you choose as an entrepreneur. And I was basically marketing and selling software solutions around the world in five different languages and did that for five or six years. And this is where things took a very weird pivot. I got the bug again to do another startup.

And so was looking very carefully what to do and I was traveling to Europe quite extensively and I'd come back with thousands and thousands of dollars of roaming bills and going across into the US was also the same problem. And at that point I started learning about global travel solutions and this is we're going back now almost 15, 16 years ago and I started my first telecom. So again, never worked a day in telecom in my life, but decided, okay, this is something really interesting. I think I can sell this.

and started talking to technology providers and put together my first company called Roam Mobility that was in the telecom space. So that was my second startup. And very quickly, it became quite successful. I was fortunate, I was able to get a partnership with T-Mobile in the US and we built a roaming service for Canadians going across the border because we had all the data, 80 % of Canadians live within an hour of the border, all the snowbirds that go into Florida and all over.

US and Arizona. So one of the challenges they had, they'd either buy a local service, they'd have to subscribe for local service, or they'd have to get, you know, this, you know, prepaid SIM card. So with T-Mobile, we were able to basically build a service that they could schedule right to the minute when they want their service to start and stop. And we sold wireless data and talk and text and long distance by the day. So it was a pretty successful service, I think. By the time I sold it in 2017, that over a quarter million Canadians had

had used the service at that point. So we made a pretty big impact and definitely disrupted the space and got the attention of all the big guys out here as well too. So, which had its plus and minuses as well too. Where it got interesting is in 2013, I was, I got contacted by Apple and we were doing some very interesting stuff with our technology, you know, as a small telco startup.

you're really, one of your key strengths is your go to market, your speed, your agility, but also the fact that you have to continually out innovate or come up with solutions that, know, to, to problems, but the solutions don't exist. So you have to invent them yourself. So we were doing a lot of interesting stuff with how we were provisioning and deactivating and managing, Sims on somebody else's network. And we were able to do it at a relatively rapid speed.

So we got a call from Apple in 2013 and said, hey, we've got this really interesting project. Would you come to Carpentino and we can introduce you to it. And that was Applesim. And that was the first foray into eSIM or kind of the first attempt at commercializing the eSIM application. And it was for iPads. And the ability was to simply subscribe for a wireless service from a number of providers using directly on your iPad. And so from there, we started, we obviously, know, small company, you know,

Apple is talking to us. We jumped in headfirst into that one and started doing some really interesting things. We started putting together services in Canada, put together a service in the UK. We started fusing them all together. So we had a global roaming service and we were selling wireless service on an iPad by the hour. So if you were at an airport layover and you needed some really fast, secure connectivity, you could buy service for like a buck and get an hour worth of wireless service from us.

And obviously it was technically, it was quite impressive. It got a lot of fanfare, but the adoption of Applesun wasn't very good. So obviously for us, we didn't see the numbers materialize. What was interesting in that though, is that we started building this, all this cool technology. And so Apple and others came along and said, Hey, could you sell this to wireless operators? Because they're out there spending millions to try to do what you're trying to do in your manner. You're doing it in a matter of months. Like how is that possible for a fraction of the cost? So that was a pivot.

where we launched a new company called Atano and that's where we started what we call eSim orchestration. And the idea there was to enable the eSim technologies and make it available to operators in a much more rapid, much more cost effective solution. And that goes way back in, that's like 2015 at that point. So way before people were talking about eSim openly. So that's, and that's kind of where we went. Fast forward 2017.

You know, we were fortunate we had companies interested in acquiring so we ended up selling the consumer business to one group We sold the eSIM orchestration to a company called Idemia, which is one of the largest SIM card and credit card and ID manufacturers in the world based out of Paris and then I joined them for three years as the head of their VP of our head of digital connectivity on a worldwide basis and then Fast forward to 2020 and COVID and all the fun stuff

And 2021, I got an opportunity to do another startup and then I started NetLync. So that's kind of the whole synopsis. I could see a book coming there. That's a fantastic story of entrepreneurship. You're right. Tell me the story of NetLync and what is NetLync? Who do you serve? I really just think this is so fascinating. Yeah. So NetLync is headquartered out of Dublin, Ireland. I'm personally in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada myself.

We've got teams around the world. But headquartered out of Dublin, Ireland. And the story of NetLync is that there was an Irish company that was already working very successful in the travel space, had been developing some IP, and they wanted to commercialize it. And so the idea there was that we were able to come to a partnership to figure out, OK, let's see how we can bring this stuff to market. And that's how NetLync has actually started.

great group of people out of Ireland that were highly supportive, but we were able to put together the capital and everything else. And we started the company, it was launched April 21st, 2021. So we were still in the midst of COVID when it started. And that was a very interesting challenge on its own. How do you start a software company in the middle of COVID out of your remote location in Vancouver, right? Where the lockdowns are still pretty much well in place overall. And so we started going from there.

Mind you, back in 2013, had already started collaborating with Apple. So I had already a really long term and really solid relationships with them as well. So from there, we were able to identify some really key opportunities inside the market. And then from there, that's how we got to entitlements as a service, which essentially device entitlements started becoming a major requirement of the telco industry. So from there, like again, with any startup, you're pivoting, you're moving around, your business plan is quite fluid, but

we landed on quite a significant opportunity through the relationship with Apple in bringing device and title list to market because it was becoming an essential service. And from there, we had to start assembling people around the world and quickly put together a team, like I said, in the middle of COVID. So it was a year before I think I met my first staff member, by the way, in person. Yeah. There are so many questions I want to ask you about this. Well, first of all, let me ask you what...

what is a device entitlement or what are device entitlements? Let's go start there. Yeah. So that, so that is, that is why we're talking to today about it and trying to explain this, this, this, this technology that most people will have never heard of and actually will likely never even see. device entitlements is essentially a, secure gateway that connects the device manufacturer.

to the handheld to the smartphone owner to the wireless network and within the middle of that triangle between all three of them, it authenticates the device. So its primary function is to ensure that I can prove Carrie is Carrie with her iPhone. That's the biggest thing. So where you'll see it in action or you won't actually see it working, but where it comes into action is anytime you activate a brand new iPhone,

Android is pretty much the exact same model, but I'll just reference iPhone because it's easier. It's anytime you activate an iPhone, anytime you restart your iPhone, anytime you go into airplane mode in and out, any scenario where your device could lose connection for whatever reason for any moment or switches networks, it will automatically re authenticate. And that's how it maintains in the world of like, for example, iMessage, it maintains the blue bubbles. So

It ensures that when Carrie is sending a text of iMessage to Emir, it's authenticated in the background, ensuring that the message is encrypted and it's authenticated on both ends because it can actually prove that Carrie is Carrie and Emir is Emir. And it does this through a number of methods, obviously through contacting the carrier and it validates the phone number. But once that's established,

then it plays even a bigger role. So that's the kind of the core component of it. But the second piece is it manages the device features that you have on the wireless network. So now, okay, now we've got, now we've got authentication established. We've proven who's who we're passing messages successfully. Now it can actually ping the wireless network and say, Hey, is this device allowed to use voiceover wifi? Is it allowed to use voiceover LTE? Can it do a device transfer? Is it allowed to add an Apple watch? And these things are really important because

by ensuring these things are allowed to happen and they're processed correctly. It ensures things like battery life is properly maintained because it's functioning properly on the network. It enables really easy features such as migrating from an old iPhone to a new one and moving over all your network settings and your carrier settings, adding an Apple watch, pairing an iPad to it as well too. it all of sudden it allows, it entitles these features

to happen and it makes the user experience much more enjoyable versus the care you're having to figure out how to make all these things happen. Apple or Google will essentially, or Android will give you a blueprint on how to put that together. So, and to make sure that the user experience is quite successful. So entitlements as a service. So tell me like, what was the, I guess the device entitlement space or this.

What did it look like before and now after you created this technology or the software platform, Entitlements as a Service? Yeah, so Entitlements, device entitlements had been around for well over a decade at that point. Again, it was created initially for this device authentication and then from there they just kept adding more more features behind it and for user experience. The problem was at the time though, is that it had been done the same way for over a decade, right?

nothing had fundamentally changed. it actually, the first versions of it was literally, we used to call it an entitlement, you know, we call it an entitlement server because it was in some ways, literally a box that was sitting inside the carrier's data center that would handle all these connections and permissions going forward. So it was, you know, the fact that it had been done the same way for 10 years, it also meant that, you know, especially in the world of telecom, you know, people don't like to rip and replace things out. Innovation,

happens frequently, but is never cheap at the same time. you are, you know, if there is a model in the, in the wireless industry, in some cases, not at all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of model. But the problem is, is that based on that old existing model and the complexities of it before in the past, deploying it, setting it up, maintaining it was really quite expensive. So when a carrier is going to implement new technology and your features and everything else,

there is a point where they will look and say, what's the ROI on this? I'm going to spend a million dollars. How is this going to come back to me? And it can come back in a million different ways. Customer satisfaction, revenue, profitability, everything you can think of from that kind of standpoint. Now, as I was explaining, Apple and Google or Android have been loading in all these features into device entitlements. And especially in the world of digitalization where you can activate your device anytime.

where 24 seven you can move to a wireless carrier by downloading a new eSIM instead of having to go to the store and carriers are relying more and more about creating a really rich experience where you're no longer sitting on hold. You're no longer standing in line. You're no longer making, you know, a five mile trip to, to, you know, to, to activate or get a new SIM card. This becomes, this function becomes absolutely critical.

in order to, I would say, enhance all these cellular features that are sitting on the back end of it. So besides just activating and using an eSIM, making sure the user experience is completely seamless and everything is working properly in the background, particularly for an iPhone. So with that being said, they needed adoption globally on this type of technology. They wanted everyone and anyone using it at

So you have an old existing legacy model. It had gone through a lot of good updates, but it was still relatively static in almost most ways. So you needed somebody come in there and be quite disruptive. And fortunately, the relationships I have with the device manufacturers, you know, they looked at us and said, hey, if you could redo this all over again, if you could rebuild entitlements from scratch, how would you do it essentially? And that was the question that was put in front of us.

I had successfully been able to deploy entitlements in the cloud, so moving it to AWS, but that only solved part of the problem. It reduced the fees for maintaining and building, but the integration costs were still the same. And there were still some complexities that were still there that really didn't make the value exponentially bigger. So from that...

standpoint, we had an opportunity to say, okay, take your past experiences, take whatever lessons you've learned in the marketplace and start with a blank piece of paper. And again, I was very fortunate. I had a great group of people that were supporting me from a financing standpoint based out of Ireland. And from there we were, we started again, blank piece of paper and started building this new entitlements as a service. And the idea there was to make it very simple. I already knew

that carriers have an incredible amount of talent within them. If you give them the right tools and you give them the right documentation and the right setup and the right processes and everything is well thought out.

99 times out of 100, they will be able to deploy entitlements on their own and they could do it relatively quickly. It didn't need to be as complex as it is. So we started building this developer-based platform that said, okay, you want entitlements instead of going to the traditional vendors like an Ericsson or an HPE or would have been at the time, Nokia and a few others, you can just simply log into this portal and using things like Stripe, Atlassian, Twilio.

quite a few other, you know, these successful self onboarding companies or developer led companies, you can, you can deploy entitlements on your own. And so we spent over two and a half years just building this platform. And then in March of, March of this year, we, formally announced entitlements, entitlements as a service where again, it's exactly what we describe it to be. Login.

get the authorization and start deploying entitlements onto your wireless network. And now the market went from being a handful of a few hundred carriers around the world having entitlements, now we have several thousand that have access to it and there's pretty much no reason why they can't get it anymore. You mentioned relationships and you said that you were fortunate a couple of times. So just curious because this seems like every entrepreneur's dream, how a small startup got quickly connected with

with Apple and other large OEMs, what would you say was the, let's say, determining factors, if you could just say there's two or three things that really helped us to get connected so quickly with those large companies, what would that be?

I get asked this question a lot actually, because I think it's kind of well established. I've worked really closely with the OEMs and there's two, I think there's two things you have to kind of realize. There's, well, there's kind of two circumstances that can get you to work with them. And I will say that there is a very strong asterisk or note of caution in working with them as well too, right? And I'll mention those as well. So,

There's the first one where you can do something really quite innovative and quite disruptive and you'll end up in the scenario where it's like, don't call us, we'll call you type of a model, right? If you do something quite innovative, you catch their eye. There is a lot of situations where obviously they have, know, time in some cases is their enemy. They may have good resources, but you'll be surprised, you know, those resources are allocated different ways. There's very strict budgets to maintain. There's everything else. So

you know, behind the scenes, it looks like Camelot on the outside with these large organizations. But once you get behind the scenes, you know, there is a, are things to be maintained. There is, and there is order in the chaos that they maintain as well too. But the pressures are really quite remarkable. If you take a look at them, just for example, is they have been on schedule for the last 16 years of launching a brand new device every single year, right?

So imagine that every year you're putting out new features, you're launching brand new operating systems. So these things have to be quite maintained. So if you're doing something quite innovative that allows them to reach their goal faster in a very effective way, they'll call on you, right? And that's what happened with us in 2013, right? They were looking to accelerate the adoption of AppleSIM. I had heard without actual data in front of me,

that a carrier doing it was costing them eight to $10 million to pull it off. And here's this little startup out of Canada, you know, doing it for several hundred thousand dollars maybe, right? So obviously from there, was an attraction and they called us. The other part too is that, know, the world of software engineering, particularly telecom overall is a small world, right? And it's also very interconnected. And so reputation also plays a really big part. If you do things quite well,

and you're pretty successful at networking, you will come across, because they are interfacing with different organizations and wireless carriers and everybody else across the world on a regular basis. And so there's an ability there to make a connection. But what it comes down to, and Carrie, the point I'm trying to make is, it's what problem are you solving? And I think that's what a lot of people miss, right? When they walk into these large organizations, even in front of investors, in front of any kind of situation, they're out there selling themselves.

they kind of take their eye off the ball and they talk about how great their technology is and how great their people are and what the house has, but they really forget to figure to, to really focus on one big problem. What problem am I solving for you? And that's really kind of the, the, I think the biggest, the biggest secret behind it. In fact, that's how we function today. We, when we are, we, we always say that we're kind of the go between where we're solving the problems for the device manufacturers. At the same time, we're solving the problem for the carriers, right?

We are problem solvers. And on top of it, we also have to apply a very high level of curiosity where we're constantly hunting for other problems that are related to what we're doing. We're not going completely off track. We stay quite, quite focused. In fact, hyper-focus is one of our mantras inside the organization. But the, the, of the key elements of it is always hunting for problems, talking to the customers, what challenges are they facing? Because believe it or not, they'll build your roadmap behind it. So once you kind of get established and you become this problem solver, then all of a sudden you can build.

you can build from there. Then it comes down to reputation, delivering on time, on budget, with quality, without any major flaws. Everybody knows not everything is perfect and being consistent, right? And then just simply maintaining those relationships, staying in constant communication, again, working on problem solving, being empathetic, I think is really key, understanding that, okay, I'm dealing with this individual.

How am I supporting them? Not just as a company, not from my perspective, not as helping my share price or my valuation. How am I helping them? All that stuff is just a byproduct or a dividend, I think, ultimately, that comes out of your efforts. So that's, once you get in there, then you go from, then you move ahead. Now, I gotta say, there's a point of caution. It's a double-edged sword, right? It swings both ways. You can get in and you can do something amazing and it can be very successful and it can get you to...

accelerate where you want to get to. But at the same time, there's a lot of risk that you take inside of that, right? In a lot of cases, they throw the risk right at you. That's the opportunity. They're presenting you the opportunity, right? Or I like to say they manufacture the opportunity for you. It's whether you jump in and how you chase it how you manage it. And it could go completely wrong. For us, I can tell you that we jumped into some projects and they went nowhere. And all of a sudden we had to

we had to take the hit. In fact, in a couple of times I would say that it put me into pretty difficult situations overall, you know, to climb out of them going forward. And that's going to be a constant, I think, going forward. So I think people have to be quite cautious that, you know, once you make the connection, you have the opportunities handed to you, be very careful because, you know, one wrong step could put you into some significant difficulties. And I'm saying it out of experience and not just once.

I understand. It's almost like be careful what you wish for, Exactly. Be prepared. prepared. Be prepared. Be Be prepared. Yeah. Yes. So let's talk a little bit about digital transformation. I mean, we hear about it just constantly. So how will this transformation really disrupt the telecom industry?

It already is and it's going to continue to disrupt even more. everyone is the big buzzword is digitalization, right? And that's been going on for several years now. COVID was an accelerator on that term. No question about it. Just added fuel to that position because during lockdown you had to go 100 % digital. saw what happened online shopping and some of those numbers have been consistently maintained post-COVID as well too.

But digitalization, so what happens is, know, carriers will simply pivot and say, okay, we need to go, we're going to become a digital, a digital customer experience. Some of them think it's just an app. I got a really, really good app and call it a day. And some of them will slap an AI label on it, which, every, you can put AI on anything these days, right? So digitalization really means it's about an attitude about, okay,

how do I get the customer to what they need to get to in the most efficient way requiring the least amount of explanation, right? And they do it with the least amount of frustration as well too, right? So the first thing is, you know, getting in there and, know, signing up for a service, picking your plan, you know, activating that service.

And then from there, making sure that it's successful, making the customer walks away thinking they've got good value, they've got a good price point and then figuring out, can I upsell them down the road? Can I add more devices? Can I do everything else? All of that has to be seamless. And can it be done through digital? Absolutely. Right. Now I kind of always say that sometimes Amazon is more of a science company or behavioral science company than it is a tech company. Right. Because its primary role is to try to guess what you want overall.

and then they'll build the experience behind it. But they've been doing the same. They've been doing the experience experience almost the same way for at least a decade. And they make small tweaks, just to change that, 1 % 2 % and it makes a big impact. But really what they're trying to do at the end of the day is they're really much into behavioral science, right? Carrie bought all these items. Let's try to guess what she's going to buy in November. Let's try to guess what her Christmas shopping list is going to look like. And so, and so they, they, they, also,

operate on the idea, and this comes back to digitization, of that humans are inherently lazy, right? We're all pretty much pre-programmed to be lazy, right, overall. But lazy is not a bad word. It just means we want to get the maximum amount of results with the least amount of effort. That's pretty much what that means. So digitization really means how to make sure that when a customer wants to sign up for wireless service and maintain their wireless service and make sure they've got the best value, how can you

make that happen as quickly as possible, as smoothly as possible without them even looking at instructions. Apple has been remarkably good at this, Android as well too, but particularly Apple, because I remember when my first daughter was born, when she would have been, when I got the first iPhone, 2007, she was born 2008, I had an iPhone at that time. By the time she was one or two years old, she,

we should get sit down and looks like she knew how to use it because they really make it incredibly instinctual. So, so carriers have to understand that carrier customers are not going to want to learn how to do it. So that's, that's what it means. It starts, you can start with a carrier app, you can start with a website, but what you now you can do, especially with device entitlements, why it's important is that Apple and Android have figured out part of these processes of activating your device, migrating to a new one, adding an Apple watch, adding an iPad.

provisioning particular services without the customer even having to make a phone call, even look on a website. It just happens completely with the highest level of elegance and the highest level of intuition as well too. So you have to have all these elements that come into play and then you've got to back it up with good customer service, right? People forget, that's the one element that they forget is that we still crave human interaction. So you do all this great digital stuff, but then you got to have the good customer service on the back end of it.

Some of them are jumping into AI fairly quickly. In some cases it may work, but in some cases it may not work either. I think the jury's out on that one still, but I would say that digitalization is not just an app. It's about a hundred other different components. And we kind of were kind of that last pin in the equation where if you don't have device entitlements, you're not going to be able to provision all these amazing features that Apple and Android have designed as part of the customer experience. you're going to get...

you're gonna stop short and then you're gonna get stuck trying to figure out how to replicate those same services on your end, right? But there's not a chance you're gonna get to the same level as they can get to. Right, right. What is the role of device manufacturers, let's say in our new world of wireless?

Well, they are the gateway, right? So they are, I mean, they're kind of, they're the gateway of almost everything that you do. I mean, it's the remote control of your life, if you think about it in some ways. So we do our banking off of our phones, right? We open and close doors for our homes and our cars off of our phones now.

We communicate with our friends and coworkers and family exclusively through our phones. We watch entertainment is one of the biggest sources of consumption is around the device. We play games off of our devices. Our IDs are now moving in the US. I believe Florida, I saw the version in California.

where they're putting driver's licenses onto devices, our boarding passes, you name it, right? So the role of the device manufacturer is to put you inside their ecosystem, right? So you have two camps you can choose from. I can go iOS, I can go Android, and they're gonna put you into that camp, and then their job is to make sure that you stay inside that ecosystem and all of your needs around your day-to-day life.

entertainment, communication, you name it, the list goes on and on and on and on are all completely fulfilled through that device one way or another. And on top of it, they're offering the performance and the reliability. And that's why every year, one of the biggest things they tell us battery life, right? Because they want to make sure that that device never goes offline for any reason whatsoever. And if you think about it today, it's like, it's very hard to take a device offline. mean, you can get on, you know, back then turn, put your plane into airplane mode. That's no longer necessary. You've got free wifi right on the plane.

So all of that is completely changing. that's really their fundamental purpose is to make sure that that device meets all of your needs on everything you can imagine and never has a reason to go offline at the same time. And so they're constantly tweaking and improving their performance. Yes, the chips. Now we've got, know, assistance, know, Apple intelligence is in there. Google has its own AI, chat GPT is in there, well embedded inside these devices. So now you've got these personal assistants there as well too.

So that's going to require them to really bump the performance of the device, right? Because these things take a lot of computing power. They take much stronger processors. They consume more battery life. And then from there, they've got to keep tweaking that operating system that you can use it without ever reading a single instruction. Just turn it on. I know what to do. That's it. And so they're always constantly figuring that out. So that's really their primary role overall. From there, the better job they do, that means the more devices

T-Mobile, AT &T, Verizon sell, right? It also means the more data they consume, it means the more family members are using those devices. So what they do is because of that, they improve the revenue and they reduce the churn for those wireless carriers because they're putting these better devices out to market. Emir, I have another question, one last question. And you talked earlier about being a global company.

There's just, this is the hottest topic that I'm always asked about remote culture. Should we be remote? Should we be hybrid? And now there's so many companies returning back to office. So, you know, how do you maintain a successful remote culture? And maybe you can describe a little bit about the culture as well as maybe some specific strategies that make it work.

It's a complex question, but there's also easy ways to answer it as well though, Okay, so the first thing keep in mind is we started the company in the middle of COVID, right? So I already had experience working in a global environment. Previous to NetLync when I was at Idemia, I had staff literally all over the world. And spent three years of my life in the constant state of travel.

which I would honestly, as glamorous as it sounds, I would not recommend to anybody because it comes at a cost down the road. So there has to be a balance. And I think people crave that more than ever. I think what COVID gave us one extreme of that balance where you could just get up and in my situation, I sometimes I start work at four o'clock in the morning, I'll roll out of bed, grab a coffee and I'm on my laptop. It's not ideal. And in other cases, you know,

We, you people, they still have an office nearby or, they're kind of a local company, they can still interact. But I think the biggest thing to understand them or what is balance. That's, the first biggest part of it behind it. So two things are maintaining a successful global workforce, particularly if it's remote. the, the burden on hiring a global workforce is you have to hire people in a lot of cases, not in all cases.

with out of the gate though, with really strong experience of seniority, right? You're looking for people that are very comfortable being autonomous, right? They're okay with making decisions. They're okay with accountability. That's kind of the first secret ingredient that you have to put in. The other part, which is a bit controversial is you have to be able to make decisions very quickly.

you have to relatively, you know, not hire so fast, but you've got to fire fairly quickly. And it's not because it's anything personal whatsoever. It's that you're looking for a group of people that when you're in bed at 2 a.m. in the morning and they're working and it's 2 p.m. in the afternoon for them, they're operating completely autonomously. They know what they're doing. They know what their task is. They know what the outcome they're trying to get to. So as an organization,

our chairman mentioned it to me the other day. He's kind of said, you know, one of the advantages you have is you operate 16 hours a day. Like the company stays completely operational 16 hours a day in a high performing functional mode. And then in those other eight hours, it goes into support and maintenance mode, right? Where there's people online to, you know, make sure that everything is running smoothly or answering customer questions or anything else on that basis. So

you've got to be able to make those decisions fairly quickly. And obviously the challenge I had was, you know, hiring people completely remotely, never getting a chance to meet them in person, never seeing any kind of what the chemistry looks like, but really relying on their experience and, and going, answering them. think going through bit of an unusual, different interview process to see, is this person the right fit? And if they're not the right fit, you have to make that call, I think fairly quickly. Obviously you have to work with them to.

you know, especially if you identify the talent, you're going to work and work that talent and you don't make that call like, sorry, this isn't working. You make that call very fast, but it's not a decision that you wait around a year or two to make, right? It has to be done in a matter of weeks, maybe in a matter of months. But if, you know, and at the same time, if the talent is there, you've got to really work on, on elevating that talent to another level. That's the second part. And so we went through a lot of that. We went through a lot of staff turnover at the beginning to get the, to get to the right team. And we've, we've managed to

to get to the right team and now we're building on top of that team and we're constantly making changes overall. The other thing too goes back to that whole piece of it is you have to also be able to hire people that are looking for a sense of accomplishment. It's not a job. They want to be part of a mission. They want to be part of an objective. People in our group, they love the fact that we're working with these major device manufacturer, we're working on advanced technologies, but we're also helping connect literally

tens of, not hundreds of millions, eventually billions of devices around the world. So they really bought into kind of the vision overall. And then from there is that because they have that desire for accountability and they have that autonomy, they have a desire to succeed overall, right? And that's, think what people, know, micromanagers are the worst things you can put inside of an organization because they take away the person's desire for success or the ability to

create a sense of purpose overall. So we really try to avoid all of that as well, as much as we can. The last point I'll make as well too, especially in the world of startups, hyper-focus, right? It's one of the lessons I've learned and I can trust me, success does not come out of the things you did right. It comes out of the things you've done wrong and you just didn't repeat them again, right? And so one of the things we've done particularly with NetLync is we've been an incredibly hyper-focused organization. People know

what we're doing, what we're building, what we're trying to accomplish and where we're trying to get to. Right. And everyone is very clear on that. So they're not getting a new strategy or a new product or a new roadmap throwing out them tomorrow because, my God, there's so much money that can be made there or we could do this or this could be another bigger opportunity or we could expand it. We, we try to be very careful with that overall and say, do what we're doing incredibly well, you know, back. It's kind of goes back to the old, the old Jack Welsh, you know, business lessons.

If you can't be number one, number two, get out. So we try to stay in that position. And then from there, everything has to have kind of a natural, natural progression behind it. Opportunities are put in front of us and we decide, is this a good fit? Does it leverage our talents? Does it get everyone excited? Can we move on to it from that basis? If it's no, then we pass it. And till today, we've passed on quite a few opportunities. Brilliant, brilliant advice. Emir, this has just been...

Fantastic. I've learned so much. How can we reach NetLync and spell NetLync? yeah, so it's it's it's it's N E T L Y N C not L I N K. Right. So www.netlync.com So N E T L Y N C dot com and simply go to our website and you can find any of our people on LinkedIn as well too.

Again, reach out and connect with us. If you're a wireless carrier and you don't have device entitlements or you're trying to go digital or you're on your way to becoming digital, you absolutely should be talking to us. That is essential for, think, especially what's the device roadmaps that are coming up over the next couple of years. It's getting really interesting and exciting. If you think you could be a contributor to the team, there's some value you add. We're always looking for good talent as well, too, so reach out to us. And then if anybody just wants to connect with me in general or ask some questions, always feel free to reach out.

Excellent. Emir, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. It's been fantastic. Thanks, Carrie. I really appreciate it as well, too. It's been fun.