Ep 184: Mathias Eklof Pt. 2/2
How to Apply the 80/20 Rule in Your Daily Life, What Role Education Plays for Startup Founders, and How to Use AI to Enhance Your Brain vs. Just Outsourcing All Your Intelligence to It
Uve Poom is the Head of Operations at Tenity Tallinn - one of the 6 hubs in Tenity's international ecosystem. Tenity is a global fintech accelerator and VC. In addition to advising startups in Tenity's portfolio, he also works with financial and state institutions to drive their innovation agendas. Uve firmly believes in building ecosystems and leveraging the strength of weak ties. Before completing his MA at Stanford, Uve spent 5 years as CEO of the Unitas Foundation (founded by 2x Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar) and as a fundraising consultant at Civitta, a leading independent management consulting firm in the Baltics and CEE.
On this episode we talk about:
Building an Ecosystem for FinTech and Climate Finance
Fundraising Landscape in 2024
Traits of a Standout FinTech Company
Best Practices for Founders in Building and Maintaining Investor Relationships
The Role of ESG and Climate FinTech
Opportunities and Challenges in Neo-Banking and Digital Lending
We are on YouTube and Linkedin as well
Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTA
Connect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/
Read the full episode transcript below
Janis Zeps (00:06.029)
All right, well, the second topic we wanted to actually discuss today, you're in education business now and I want to open up with the classic AI twist that we have to almost ask anyone. Like some people might say now, like, why do I need higher education anymore? ChatGP can answer and provide all the answers I need. What's your take on this? Like you're the role of AI now and somebody who's...
Mathias (00:17.311)
You
Janis Zeps (00:33.588)
17, 16, 18 years old. Does that person go to university anymore? Does that person need university anymore?
Mathias (00:35.307)
you
Mathias (00:42.264)
Yeah, such a big topic, right? Like it's, it's, and it gets so messy, right? Because everybody has an opinion and it's like, so it's just kind of information tsunami out there. yeah, let's try and kind of break it down. First of all, I think AI is a of a misnomer. I think it should be called like machine intelligence, not artificial intelligence. It's like either it's intelligence or it's not like either, either you're pregnant or you're not. It's not like you are artificially pregnant or
Pregnant like you are pregnant or not pregnant. So either it's intelligence or it's not intelligence. And if it's a machine that generated it, let's call it machine intelligence. and you know, definitely you guys, know, me kind of less. So it's like biological intelligence, right? so it's still intelligence. So that's, that's something I think for me kind of helps me kind of, you know, to give some kind of basis for it. But then, yeah. So, so the young kind of kid considering things.
I mean, already today we are using technology as an augmentation of our ability, right? So we use like phones and all that stuff. So it's already, we are already cyborgs, I guess you could argue, and that's not my idea. You know, a lot of people have had that idea. So that's like another dimension to it. But yeah, I think another thing which helps me think about it is like you have these big models, which by the way, are not like a new thing. So I heard this or read this interesting story.
about arguably the most successful hedge fund of all time, Renaissance Technologies, Jim Simons in the US. They started out even before the fund itself was launched by finding statistical models that they then used to trade stocks. And they compared for the Canadian Parliament, they took French language versions of legislation and compared to the English language. And then they generated models based off of that.
Janis Zeps (02:28.029)
Mm-hmm.
Mathias (02:39.05)
and it seems like a true story. But so these models are, you know, using some body of information to train themselves on rights and that body has come from somewhere that's not generated by, you know, machine intelligence, at least not yet. Maybe it could be, you know, in the future, but but it's trained on things and you have this kind of music. You have a bunch of artificial music, if you call it that, or, you know, machine generated music on YouTube, which is like hilariously funny, like
But it's trained on some music. So you kind of need something real to train things on. So I think that will definitely still have to be there. Like you have to train it on something. And it's like just a very particular type of intelligence that we're talking about. It's, know, predictive and, you know, all the rest of it. Having said that, it's like super impressive what it can do. But I think, you know, probably you have a choice of do I want to outsource intelligence to...
you know, a machine or do I want to insource intelligence into my brain and insourcing the intelligence into my brain, it means I have to go through, you know, brain training programs, AKA education. And then I can internalize the intelligence in my brain, you know, to the extent that, I mean, our brains are not good at just kind of remembering a bunch of data. The brain is good at remembering whatever, you know, saying this as like
I have no idea how the brain works, but you good at remembering structures and patterns and all these things. But I mean short answer is yeah definitely there's a place for it, but yeah like use it you know rather than let it use you, that's such a cliche. Let's not say that cliche but...
Janis Zeps (04:26.7)
And I was like...
Uldis Teraudkalns (04:27.999)
Yeah, but I think it is the right way how to think about it. I like this outsourcing intelligence.
Janis Zeps (04:32.135)
Outsource, insource was good example. Like you want get Dumber or you want to get Sparter, kind of like.
Mathias (04:35.694)
Amen.
Yeah, and I think a big part of it is like when I think about it, there's a movement now, you know, to let kids not use phones, right? And I think to the extent that the brain gets, if it is the case, that the brain gets negatively affected during the kind of development of the brain by, you know, being constantly exposed to these sort of the quick, you know, enjoyment of, know, watching cartoons on a screen or whatever, you know, playing games or whatever. So I think...
Maybe what's going to happen is like you don't get exposed to screens up until you're a late teenager or whatever and you get stimulus by reading books and doing traditional stuff and then at some point when your brain is ready that's when you plug it into this external machine, intelligence, cyborg source and then your brain is ready to take control of the machine rather than the machine taking control of your brain.
Sounds a bit esoteric, but that's somehow how I would think about it.
Janis Zeps (05:36.921)
Well, that's an interesting question because we are kind of this generation we like to at least think of that. I mean, we had some technology exposure, but like we're kind of, at least we didn't have this instant TikTok and the scrolling since we were like seven, right? So we're kind of, guess we, you know, we were brought up the old way, but we adapted the new ways quite quickly. So that's one way, right?
Mathias (05:52.408)
Yeah.
Mathias (06:00.558)
I mean, we are the we are obviously the perfect generation because we have this traditional training and then I mean, just to say the obvious.
Janis Zeps (06:03.928)
Yeah, well, good question, right? So exactly. We want to.
Uldis Teraudkalns (06:10.099)
You might have forgotten the thousands of hours you spent playing video games, Jens. I haven't.
Janis Zeps (06:17.242)
That's true. Now ask this question to any generation, like that answer will be the same. But it's interesting, like to think, like let's say our setup, we did this and then that versus the new setup. I grew up with a phone. Cause obviously people might learn things faster growing up with a phone, but there's also downsides. I mean, we learn more and more about them. It's almost, I'm now in the camp that it's almost going to be like.
Mathias (06:17.926)
Right.
Janis Zeps (06:42.744)
In 10 years, we'll look at this as like a smoking, like you wouldn't allow your seven year old to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and like, but you still, so there are a lot of downsides as well. I don't think we have an answer to this question, but let's see, but we'll see, we'll see soon actually.
Mathias (06:55.267)
Yeah.
But in terms of, yeah.
Uldis Teraudkalns (06:58.027)
We merely adapted the phones. The new generation was molded by it.
Janis Zeps (07:00.375)
Yeah
Mathias (07:04.706)
Yeah, but yeah, so in terms of education, right, it's super interesting question. And I mean, it's kind of still early to answer the question probably. But yeah, I'm in the camp that you need to learn things with your own brain. You can ask chat GPT or some other GPT questions. And that can be really helpful. You can use it even as a business coach. So obviously it's
Many people say that, the skill of prompting is becoming a key skill. If you ask ChatGPT what is a good business, it's going to come up with some stuff that sounds kind good, but it's not necessarily going to make a lot of sense if we're talking from the perspective of business education here. But if you ask it to, okay, ChatGPT...
Can you analyze Metta's latest annual report using the Hamilton-Helmer framework of competitive forces? Or Porter's competitive forces, Hamilton-Helmer's seven powers? Then it's going to do a pretty good job at doing that. So if you prompt it in the right way, you're going to get something out of it. But then you have to be aware of Porter's five forces.
Porter's forces and Hamilton-Helmner's forces and you know all the rest of it so it takes skill to be able to prompt and I think if you're like a master prompter then you can really, again like you can harness that power instead of that power you know using you or you know just being a passive consumer or whatever.
Janis Zeps (08:50.521)
That's a good point, because mean, like prompting is not that easy if you like, I mean, ability to ask good questions is not easy. And that ability doesn't come from, you know, it only comes from, let's say, experience learning exactly exposing yourself, training your brain, and prompting in the end, like the, you know, what you put in, you get out, right? So in that sense, like without your brain being
you know, stimulated, worked and trained, don't believe you can really ask the questions in a way that you will get these answers at a high level, right?
Mathias (09:28.909)
Yeah.
Uldis Teraudkalns (09:30.933)
have to develop a master's degree in prompting.
Mathias (09:35.52)
Yeah, there should be something like that already out there. yeah, the prompt master. mean, the take that we have on this thing and with Pareto Business School, with this mini MBA called the Pareto MBA that we have, it's... So we totally agree that the old way of doing education does not make any sense. Like you sign up. So with MBA programs, so first of all, they cost...
Janis Zeps (09:41.338)
PromptMaster.
Janis Zeps (10:00.314)
Mm-hmm.
Mathias (10:04.014)
bunch of money and you have to set aside like a year, year and a half or whatever to do these programs, you know, and you pay like 100,000, 150, 200, 250, whatever, thousand, you know, euros or dollars to do them. and yeah, that does probably not make sense for, for most people. Right. So, but at the same time, just saying that chat GPT is going to do everything for me also is too much to the, to the other extreme probably. So the take that we have is.
Let's try and really boil down an MBA program using the Pareto Principle, so the 80-20 principle. You try and give 80 % of the value with 20 % of the inputs, or even more than that, you can take it to the power of 2 or power of 3. Let's say you want to give 64 % of the value with 4 % of the time or something like that.
So you really try and boil it down and be as practical as you can and design it for people who actually are living real lives. So they have a job that they want to keep doing. So you don't take one and a half years off your career or your job while also maybe even having some kind of private life, who knows, right? So that's how we designed the program. And yeah, it's super duper interesting. There's no marketing. We don't sell it in any way really. It's just kind of word of mouth.
We've done a few podcasts in Sweden talking about it and there's been some articles written about it because we're kind of the underdog, right? Like we're pointing a finger at traditional business education. We're saying like, you guys suck. you are doing it the old way and there's a better way to do it. And so that's what we are trying to do.
Janis Zeps (11:47.033)
Actually, good that you brought it up and know how much is it anchored in the curriculum that you do, but like Pareto, for example, like everybody would love to say like and apply it on everyday basis, right? Like how do I identify the 20 % that gives 80 %? Any kind of take from what you have learned in business where people, how to put it, missed opportunities where people are missing out on applying this principle?
Mathias (11:59.938)
Yeah.
Mathias (12:16.108)
Yeah, mean, running businesses and it doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur starting your own or running your own business or if you're an employee in a big corporation. It's messy. Like business is just so messy. It's just like chaotic information overflow and in the middle of this chaos, you're trying to do your job, right? It's pretty insane really when we think about it. kind of anything we can do to simplify, you know, the analytical
process or like simplify, you know, people's lives when they are running businesses. That's a good thing. And so, so obviously one way to do that is this famous Pareto principle named after Wilfredo Pareto, the famous Italian engineer and economist who I think lived from 1848 to 1923 or something. So he was really an engineer, but he was also like a mathematician sort of economist. And he, he had this observation that 80 % of the land in Italy was owned by 20 % of the landowners.
in an even more interesting that that inside the 80 % 80 % was owned by 20 % of the 20%. So like you have this extreme power law rights, which also, know, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about this a lot, like it's not a normal distribution. It's a power law. So the Pareto law is a version of it's one of those power laws. But yeah, so anything you can do to kind of simplify things down. So we have part of the program.
We have one module where your task is, so a module is one week for us. So one of the modules is you have a task of eliminating something. It could be eliminating like a meeting, eliminating something that you're doing. I mean, anything you can do to kind of trim things and remove things, or you have a meeting which is 60 minutes and you know, let's take it down to 30 minutes or 45. Like anything, like those techniques should be used like all the time.
It's a big thing, obviously, in the United States and in the tech world recently with downsizing. So arguably the tech companies became too big and too bulky leading up to 2021. then Meta did a lot of big cuts. then famously Elon Musk took over Twitter and fired a bunch of people. And that was a big thing in those libertarian circles in Silicon Valley.
Janis Zeps (14:25.746)
Yeah.
Mathias (14:42.722)
All these people are totally unnecessary. let's, let's kind of kick them out. but so that's like an extreme version of it really, you know, probably going too far. You could argue about that, but yeah, like anything you can do to simplify your business is, is, is really, you, you sort of have to have it almost like a process. So like every month or something like you review, like, what can I eliminate? So that's like, we call it even a super behavior. So elimination is one of the super behaviors that we kind of teach on the program.
There are a few other ones like asking for help, Steve Jobs famously asked for help and people don't ask for help enough because you don't want to be vulnerable or whatever it is. There are these kind of simple things that you can implement which make your life easier and a bit less painful to be involved with business. So we try and of teach those because we want to make people feel a bit better running businesses.
Janis Zeps (15:36.009)
Hmm.
Janis Zeps (15:43.36)
I never thought of this from the Pareto way, but if I look back at half a year or so, I've also tried to... Elimination is something I've worked a lot, like just your list of things you want to do, it grows, and then once a week, I'm just like, is it really? Maybe you can throw it out, and that frees up some time. And the second thing you also said, there's sometimes things you can...
If not delegate, then kind of like involve others like, hey, is it something I should do or is it something somebody else can help me do? Not like even asking for help, but like, look, maybe it's outside a bit more of my field of responsibility. Again, saves a few percent definitely here and there. looks like an interesting program basically that you're doing.
Mathias (16:25.262)
I mean.
I mean, yeah, like it's we really kind of built it for, know, so both. So Jens Beckbom is the other the guy is an old study buddy of mine, kind of similar military background to me as well. And we studied together at the Stockholm School of Economics. So we built this program together. And he's amazing guy, one of Sweden's, Sweden's easily best entrepreneurs. So it's like, it's worth doing it just because it's him, right. But we built this program together, totally bootstrapped with the idea.
that the business education that we had did not help us so much when we ended up being entrepreneurs and running things in the real world. So that was really where we came from. And one thing we talk about a lot on the program is doing the right it versus doing it right. It sounds kind of catchy, but the idea is that it's sort of more important to be doing the right it.
Like if you are Nokia in 2006, you know, maybe you are not doing the right it or maybe you're like Kodak, you know, when Kodak was doing not digital film, right? analog film, they were not doing the right it. They thought they were in the business of making film, but they were actually in the business of sort of photography or experiences and they didn't understand that. So they were, they were not doing the right it. And then doing it right on the other hand.
is more about the efficiency. So that's like how you can like optimize your operations and be like more efficient, hopefully doing the right it. And if you're both doing the right it and you are doing it right, then you probably have like a very powerful business because they kind of strengthen each other, right? So we try and focus on these like underlying concepts in business. So another thing would be, Warren Buffett talks a lot, know, and Charlie Munger, you know, may he rest in peace, like talks a lot about moats.
Mathias (18:24.024)
So like this protection that you can have around your business. And so we talk a lot about modes, like how can you see if there's a mode around your business? Is there something maybe in the financial statements, maybe you can look at like the gross margin and see if there is a mode. And if yeah, and yeah, like how can you identify modes and maybe how can you increase your modes? And yeah, so, so the mode concept is like one of those super important concepts that we also try and teach. And so we believe like if you
learn these powerful concepts, then you can apply them across different businesses. The Pareto Principle in itself is one of those powerful concepts. Focusing on the 20 % of clients that give you 80 % of revenue would be a classical example of it, or the 20 % of your clients that give you 80 % of the complaints or whatever it is.
Janis Zeps (19:19.618)
Just or just saying like, you know, I don't know, I have 10 things I need to do today. Like which one or two things are gonna have the biggest impact on, you know, whatever I'm trying to achieve here, right? How often do we ask this question? Very often you just, okay, let's do this because it's quick. Let's do this because it's Exactly.
Mathias (19:27.916)
Yeah. Right.
Uldis Teraudkalns (19:33.193)
This is easiest to do, let's punch through. But what's the target audience, like the primary who you want to help with this?
Mathias (19:44.908)
Yeah, so we've had so far six cohorts as we call them. So these are groups of people and each group is sort of maximum 20 people. So we've had so far 125 maybe students on the program. It's really a mix. It's really, really interesting because it's everybody from, you know, even so from tech companies. Yeah, you have people like CMOs and CTOs and that kind of stuff. But we have a bunch of engineers who have been on the program probably had like
20, 30 engineers, meaning, know, PhDs in chemistry and different types of engineering degrees who, for example, if you sort of progress in your career, if you're an engineer, right, you progress in your career and then you become like team lead or head of some parts of the operation in your company, but you don't really have any experience of whatever it is like budgeting or P &L responsibility or even leadership.
Then you kind of need something, but you can't take like one and a half years off to go off to, you know, some fancy full-time MBA program. So that's like another group. We've had a bunch of lawyers and that's kind of similar. They are super intelligent people, but they have no idea about business in some cases. So they really feel they want to strengthen both their actual skills, right? But also their perceived self-confidence. So one, one, one of the Swedish media wrote about our program. They said that we sell.
you know, confidence in a sense, it's true. But yeah, it's like such a broad variety of people, know, our biggest actually corporate client is a company with 60,000 employees. But, and you know, and the smallest clients we have, have, they are sort of solo entrepreneurs or, know, working in startups. So it's like this really kind of broad spectrum, which doesn't make any sense, right? Like if you talk to a startup and the advice that, you know, I would give or that Jens, my, you know,
co-founder and friend would give is like focus right like don't try and go for the whole market but but you know This has happened without again any marketing really so people just kind of come from all these different Companies and want to sign up so so that's it's really kind of fascinating But super broad, you know spectrum of people
Janis Zeps (22:00.26)
Well, entrepreneurs have this interesting relationship with education. Like from one end you have the archetype of founders like screw college, I'm going to drop out, forget everything, like that doesn't help me. And the same guy a few years later might be like, I need the best engineer from MIT who's like super smart. What's your take on the relationship between founders, successful founder, 20, 24, how big role?
this type of education, MBA or any kind of education plays in success.
Mathias (22:33.378)
Yeah, it's so hard, right? Because we have all these outliers who, you know, skipped college and, you know, or started off at, you know, MIT or whatever and Stanford and then kind of, you know, left and started companies and became, you know, billionaires and so on and so forth. So we have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, right. So we have to be kind of careful to, to draw conclusions because it's so much like bias, but I mean, I think it's a relevant question to ask, does.
Janis Zeps (22:47.489)
That's by the way super like privileged thing to do like ability to leave Harvard. Just like screw that.
Mathias (23:02.03)
traditional education add value? Does it have positive value or negative value for you? And that's the answer is not obvious, right? Like if you spend, so I spent four years at the Stockholm School of Economics and I'm not sure that that was the best use of my time to go to those classes. Like the stuff that we learned was in many cases not only irrelevant, but in many cases also like incorrect. You know, how the financial markets function.
how interest rates and, you know, I can go into detail, but yeah, how that stuff functions, that was not how it actually works in the real world. So there was like negative value in going to those classes. On the other hand, like the network and again, the self-confidence that you get from doing a program. And because you talk to your, so, you know, the reason we do this in a cohort, in a group format is there's so much education out there, which is like self-study education.
The problem is if you take a course on like Coursera or Masterclass or whatever, know, might be, you know, a 10 % completion rate on those things. So people start them and they don't finish them. That's like one of the huge challenges. So on one hand you have traditional education, which is not really working because it's like irrelevant and boring, like, you know, universities and business schools. On the other hand, you have like Coursera courses and other versions of that, which people start and not finish. So...
Janis Zeps (24:14.98)
point.
Mathias (24:29.492)
our idea was to have something kind of like in between. So it's still a cohort format. It's still a group format. So let's say we do this program together, then we're going to be on a call every Wednesday for one hour and every Friday for one hour and 15 minutes and you know, working on cases together and like having kind of fun, right? And learning at the same time. And I know that you guys are going to be on the call on Wednesday. So of course I'm going to be on the call on Wednesday because like I want to hang out with you guys and you know, learn together. So you get like, we have
some insane completion rate, you know, above 90%. And that's probably a lot to do with the fact that it's like a group kind of program. So yeah, you kind of have to, it's tricky with education. It's like super hard because not only have, do you have to try and identify the things that are like important to learn, then you have to kind of try and figure out how to teach them in a good way. And then third, like you have to try and make people show up, right? It's like insanely difficult.
to run education in a good way. And most of these online educational things, they fail miserably because of many different reasons. Also, we are not a subscription, like subscriptions were so hot, you know, for a number of years that everybody wanted to do education on tap, like education as a subscription. And it hasn't really worked. none of that has really worked. So it does make sense like to have a group, you know, like a fixed program with fixed starting and ending dates.
but kind of try and do it in a kind of way that's kind of relevant in reality. That's been our take on it.
Janis Zeps (26:09.764)
Yeah, well, mean, education is going to buy. I'm sure this topic will be coming up more and more. think the world is changing so fast that, you know, you need to learn how to learn and then you also need to learn and then you need to learn how to apply things to learn that you learn. So how to prompt. Thanks for prompting this discussion. This was super exciting to talk to you again.
Uldis Teraudkalns (26:23.457)
how to prompt.
Mathias (26:25.88)
Yeah.
Mathias (26:29.557)
Thank
Janis Zeps (26:33.485)
about this topic more exciting about the, you know, the previous topic we covered about Ukraine. Of course, it's a bit different feelings there, but it's still extremely valuable to hear these insights. Yeah. Thanks a lot for coming on board and I'm sure we see each other again on this podcast.
Mathias (26:50.07)
Yeah, super cool to be here. I love to talk about this stuff. It's easy to go on like rants here, but yeah, exciting stuff.
Janis Zeps (26:58.977)
And yeah, check out Pareto Business School. We'll put a link as well in the show notes. Thank you. We'll see you next week.
Uldis Teraudkalns (27:05.783)
Thanks guys, bye.
Mathias (27:06.296)
Thanks guys. Ciao.
Please note that the transcript text is AI-generated. We apologize for any potential errors or inaccuracies. Thank you for your understanding.
