Gereon Hermkes: All right, everyone, welcome to Behendigkeit podcast episode seven. My name is Gereon, and I’m with Pauline today. And we’re coming straight to you from Berlin, Germany. Good to be back. Hi, everyone. All right, so today we have a very special book that we’re going to talk about. And actually we’re going to just talk about a couple of parts of it because honestly, it’s so dense, it’s so good that we will probably take a long time just to get through the first couple of chapters. And I’m talking about the book. I’m going to hold it up in the German version first, and it’s called Project Lightspeed. Project Lightspeed and the English version and the author’s is actually English, I believe, um, is called the vaccine. Um, but I actually prefer the title, uh, Project Lightspeed because it’s about, um, the two founders of the company BioNTech, who invented and produced the BioNTech vaccine, the Covid vaccine that Americans know as the Pfizer vaccine because they had a partnership. And but it’s not so much about the vaccine in my mind. It’s about the business. It’s about the people. It’s about their mentality. And it’s it’s an incredible book and these are incredible people. And yeah, we’re going to talk a little bit about their story. And what I really like about it is that, um, they are from Germany and I think they exhibit the best Germany has to offer. They are both professors. They are both entrepreneurs. They are actually family. They are married to each other. They have a child, right? They’re not. Some hermit who is closed off to the rest of the world, can barely speak to anyone, doesn’t have a family and so on. So they basically have it all. And I think they are very impressive. And so we’re going to go through a couple of noteworthy items about them. All right. So the first thing I have to say is I’m a big fan of biotech for a couple of reasons. And like almost everything is great about them. So first of all, those two husband and wife, both professors, both doctors, both researchers. There’s so many funny stories about them and like, very quirky stuff, very nerdy stuff. And it just makes you smile reading about it, right? So even before reading the book, I’ve heard that when they got married after their wedding ceremony, they actually went back to the lab the same day. And I mean, think about the dedication and how crazy you have to be to marry. And on your day of getting married, you’re going back to the lab. Really crazy. Another thing that I really like, and there’s actually so many tiny little things that I like about them, is that their address, their corporate address, it’s I’m going to say it in German and their gold chain. And so, um, basically in English it means, um, number ten gold mine. Right. And this is kind of funny. Right? Because now we know that they were very successful and, they’re made billions in sales with the Covid vaccine. But it actually didn’t look like that when they started on this venture to create this vaccine. And it’s just funny to have this kind of street name. It’s kind of weird because usually in Germany the names are a little bit more sober, but I think it’s really funny. And the other thing is that what I really like is that we actually we at Team Flow have something in common with them, and that is that we both we both have an office, a base in Rwanda, Africa. Right. And this is kind of special. A lot of people don’t really know about Rwanda that much. They sometimes have heard of the genocide that occurred thirty years ago. Um, but they don’t really have a picture of it. And we know around a little bit better. We have an office there, we have employees there, and we actually got to love it because it’s a it’s a very cool country. They are trying to be the Singapore of Africa. It’s extremely safe there. It’s extremely clean there. So, you know, if you think of East Africa, you probably wouldn’t think that it’s actually much safer there for a woman to walk there at night than most parts of Germany, right? Especially in large cities, especially in Berlin. So can you guys tell that I’m from Berlin and she isn’t? And. Okay, um, I’m gonna let that slide for now. Um, but I’m sure we’re gonna come back to it. But it’s it’s actually true. Right? So, um, Kigali, the capital city, is safer than Berlin. I think that’s fair to say. Of course, there’s, like, always differences. On what? Which part of Berlin you’re talking about. But it’s extremely safe. And it’s also extremely clean to a degree that most people probably can’t imagine. So Berlin is a pretty dirty city. Love it. But it’s dirty. Let’s be fair. And in Kigali, I’m not exaggerating. You can basically eat off the street. Everything is just clean, clean, clean, clean. There’s a policeman or like a soldier on every street corner. Right. And so, um, it’s a very interesting place to be. It’s growing like crazy. They have a good, um, they have low corruption there. Everything is very stable. Safe people are educated, everybody speaks English. And if they sometimes, you know, if you find somebody who doesn’t speak English well, then at least they speak French, right? And so it’s a very interesting place to be and we’re happy to be there. And well, biotech is there too. Right. And this for us validates being in Rwanda. But that also shows how forward looking they are. They know what’s going on in the world. They know where to go next. And so this is something we have in common with them and which I of course love quite a bit. So I have to say the book and it was written by Let Me See by Joe Miller. I have to say, this book is really expertly written, right? Um, even if you don’t like the topic, don’t like, um, the two founders of biotech, you just have to say that this Joe Miller guy is an expert writer. He explains the medical concepts extremely well. We’re not going to touch on them at all in this podcast, because we’re more focused on the business side and on the, you know, like how to think and how to be successful stuff. But I have to say, if you want to read a good business biography that is really easy to read, that has a good flow, that’s interesting. Despite the difficulty of the topic, um, you should really go with it. And so I’m just going to jump from point to point and just talk about some noteworthy things. And one thing I want to notice is, um, the author’s note. So in the very beginning of the book, he says that they’ve actually changed some names of places and identifying features because they were requests of security services charged with protecting BioNTech and its suppliers from ongoing threats. And so I just want to highlight this because we’ve been talking about Tesla in past podcasts. And I think this is really important to know is that it’s a bit ominous. But if you’re doing something really successful, if you get rich doing so, if you’re doing something that is controversial, if you’re doing something that is valuable to hostile governments, you are probably going to be at some kind of risk, right? And it was well known when they started to show the first successes that actually the BND, the German Security Agency, intelligence agency, had to protect the company because of course, other countries were trying to steal their intellectual knowledge. Right. And I find this on one hand, it’s not a big surprise, but on the other hand, I still find it very shocking. Um, because these guys are doctors that are trying to find a solution for a pandemic and, um. Are beset by this security threat. Right. And this is especially pertinent because, um, these guys, they still ride their bike to work, right? That’s what I meant with the nerdy stuff. Right? So they are billionaires, right? And they ride their bike to work. And if they take a driver, it’s always the same taxi driver that knows them and who’s quite old and who’s been with them from the first day. Right. And this is what I mean. You can really, like, feel how humane they are. You know, they are not some people whose success went to their head, even though they have every right to do so because they’re successful entrepreneurs, they’re successful researchers, um, and they have made it in Germany. They have worked their way up to the elite of the country. And, um, they have every right to be proud of themselves and even be a bit cocky, but they’re not, which makes them even more likable.

Pauline Rummel: Yeah, that’s a fair point. Like, they’re super humble, but it’s also like they always said, they’re not doing it for the money at all. Like they really want to do something good for the people. They want to help them. They want to find solutions. They want to. Yeah, that’s that was their goal in life. They really wanted to. Yeah. Invent something for defending his like or like. Yeah. Doing something against the diseases. And that’s I think still in their head doesn’t matter how much money they made and how successful they are now, but they’re humble and they never lost their real focus.

Gereon Hermkes: Yeah. And I love that you say that because this is actually what it is about, right? It’s about some form of agility, business agility, how how to be successful and so on. But, um, if you think back a couple of episodes when we talked about Tesla, what did we say? Well, he could have taken out money quite early and he actually invested his own money into the company. Right. He didn’t have to do that. He was already a millionaire because he, uh, Elon Musk had, um, had shares in PayPal when it was acquired by eBay. Right. And he didn’t have to do all this stuff. He doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t need to be yelled at on, on Twitter and in the media, like, all day long and get into trouble. And of course, he’s getting the trouble with those, um, intelligence agencies of other countries. I think the pressure that he is under, I don’t want to defend some of his outbursts, but I think people underestimate the pressure that the guy is under. It’s just incredible and almost unimaginable to mere mortals. But he reinvested the money first, built an expensive car, then built a cheaper car, lower the prices, build out the energy system. Right? Take it step by step. And at any point of time you could have said, I’m stopping taking the money out. I’m done with this. Right. And he’s not doing that. I’m really thankful for that. Because what would happen if you just said, you know, maybe he did. The Bezos, the founder of Amazon, right. At some point of time. Okay. It’s enough. I’m going on my yacht, I’m lifting weights I Remarrying, right? And I’m done with it. But he’s not doing that. He’s still in the grind, even though he really doesn’t need to be.

Pauline Rummel: Yeah, I think that’s because of, like, he maybe he, he fulfilled his dream or his vision. But after this, the next vision is coming, you know. So he knows there is so much more to do like in Tesla Elon Musk, whatever. But also like those guys they see, okay, we did something great. We we invented a vaccine. But there are so many more diseases in the world. So why should we stop? And that’s exactly the point. They’re they’re humble and they know, okay, we can do much more good for the world, much more good for the people, whatever. So that’s a good entrepreneurial. Like they achieve their goals, but they know there’s a lot of more things to do to achieve whatever. So that’s the reinvesting thing. I think it’s like you said, they can stop. They can have a good life, especially also their kids and their kids. They would not have to work at all. but they see the possibility to do further stuff, to do more good stuff. So why not investing their money? And that’s making them. Yeah. Really lovely people. Yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: And also this kind of speaks to me in that. I sometimes tell people, okay, you have to get out of your consumer mindset. So for example, sometimes with employees, they, you know, they want everything to be like ready to consume, like you’re at a McDonald’s. It’s easy to eat the food. You don’t have to have good teeth. You don’t have to chew a lot. And like the Coke, the calories just flow into the milkshakes, right? Everything just flows into you. It’s very easy to digest. And I think we’re really being, um, I don’t want to say trained because that’s maybe going a little bit too far. But life is getting easy, right? We’re just talking in the break about evolution and like what our bodies were actually created to do over six million years of evolution and it was probably not eating for two days, right. And then finding some, some berries or some some plants that were edible, or maybe catching an animal and it surely wasn’t going to McDonald’s two to three times a day and barfing down all that food. And so I think it’s very easy to be a consumer watch TikToks all day long have McDonald’s deliver, right? But it’s much more difficult to be a producer. And it’s so inspiring to me to see people who really don’t need it, but who are driven by a larger mission to, like, go all in on it. And especially if they, like, stay humble and keep a regular life. Right? It would already be so impressive. But they have a kid, right? And not somebody they send off to some boarding school in Switzerland. Right. And so I just, you know, I think I’m gonna say it again. You can you can sense how impressed I am by them, but I think they are basically the best that Germany can offer, and I think people really ought to study how they came up, what they did, how they developed to be this way and what they do on a daily basis. Just like with Elon Musk, I think we have a lot to learn from them. Absolutely. So they have become famous in biotech, has been has become famous because they developed the Covid vaccine, but actually they are doing a little bit of different stuff and we’re not going to get too much into the details. They are fighting cancer. So the mission is literally to cure cancer. And I honestly feel a little bit dumb right now because when we were talking about Tesla, I was saying, oh yeah, but Elon Musk has two grand visions, two grand missions. First, change the electric. Uh, excuse me, the energy system of the planet. Right. And then also make humanity multi-planetary. And, oh, what could be another one. Right. And then we are thinking, and those guys are, well, cure cancer, right? True. There you go. There’s a big problem that needs to be solved, right? And they’re on it. And we see the same pattern. And I think over the as the podcast progresses, I think we’re going to see this pattern again where people just take on these huge challenges. And like you said, they stay on target, right? They don’t let anything deter them from getting there. They always change the methods. They always change the direction. But they don’t let go of the goal. They seek a very big, juicy, hairy, important problem, and then they go after it like there’s no tomorrow. And so they’re not actually in the vaccine business when Covid hits and vaccine development. So this is not the I think this is important for people to understand. It’s not their the business. They are working on something different. And it’s actually quite difficult to develop vaccines, to produce them, to have them tested by the regulatory bodies. And they see this coming and change course to start producing a vaccine. And this is how they became famous. And I want to focus today on something specific that’s hopefully useful for leaders, and especially people in product or people who are trying to figure out how how to find their way in life. And I want to ask you something, Pauline. So you’re a surfer, right? Mhm. So take me through like how you surf. So let’s say um, you go to surf. You go to the beach, you have your board. What happens next?

Pauline Rummel: I get dressed in my uh, wetsuit? It depends where I’m surfing on the weather. Like, is it cold? Is it warm? Ocean? And then I’m gonna get warm, do some pre workout at the beach. Probably. And then I just take my like grab my board, go in the ocean and wait for a good wave. Sometimes it happens that there are no big waves coming. So I’m just like chilling on my board tanning a little bit. But it depends on my wetsuit. But of course. So it could happen that I’m not even like surfing or two or three waves a day because like, it depends on the current whatever. And so yeah, I mean, of course, you know, like where you can like expect some good, good waves or whatever. So you probably go, go to those destinations. But sometimes to just go with the flow. Sounds, sounds funny but it’s like that. Mhm.

Gereon Hermkes: So if you’re a beginner and you’re surfing for the first time, can you describe like what’s the experience of paddling out to where you want to catch the the wave for the first time.

Pauline Rummel: First of all, I have to be honest, it’s super exhausting. It’s super hard because, like, you barely stand you most of the time. You lay on your board. You’re not. Even if you stand up, you’re gonna fall like one hundred times. And if you stand one way, you’re super happy. You feel like the best person and like it’s such a success and a good feeling. But then you fall down again. You swim out, you paddle out, and then, yeah, you’re you’re exhausted. But it’s it’s a good feeling because you get better, you get better. And but especially for beginners, I think it’s, it’s a challenge.

Gereon Hermkes: So I want to zoom in on that. Because if people don’t have that experience of surfing, when they think of surfing, they see somebody riding in a tube, you know, like a giant wave. They’ve that they’ve seen on YouTube. Is it like that?

Pauline Rummel: Like, of course you especially you have big boards, like when you start, you see those cool surfers not even wearing wetsuits because they don’t need it. They’re not like the wetsuits are because they’re getting cold, but they’re not. They don’t need it because they’re mostly out of the water, like riding their boards. And you were like laying there and looking at them and be just yeah, impressed.

Gereon Hermkes: So that’s exactly how I feel. So first of all right. So people think about surfing okay. I see somebody riding in there in the tube or whatever. And but it’s actually not. You’re saying it’s difficult, but I would actually say isn’t it already very difficult. And I have very limited experience but I have some. Isn’t it already very difficult to just get out.

Pauline Rummel: Yeah it is, it’s super, super hard. Yeah. I think once you’re out you’re already like exhausted because it’s hard to paddle against the current whatever. And you’re there watching them. It looks so easy if you if especially if you’re outside watching them their way. Like riding the waves. Like it’s it’s the easiest thing. But once you’re out on your board and you’re not even, like on your way back, it’s super hard. Yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: So that was my experience as well. Like, even if you’re fit, just paddling out, it uses muscles that you don’t usually use and just paddling out once against the current, depending on the current of course is super draining and you do two or three times the first. The first time you do it and you’re going to be sore as hell for quite some time.

Pauline Rummel: Not even paddling thing. I think once you fall down to get up on your board, it’s also like hard, like it’s a like it’s a mission. Really? Yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: Okay, cool. So, you know, everyone has this image of surfing, but now we’re hearing from somebody who’s very good at it that it just like, especially in the beginning, just getting out there where you can like, even look at waves and like try to catch one is quite exhausting, right. And so let’s say you’ve managed to do that. You’re like sitting on the board. Everybody, I think, knows that picture. You’re sitting on the board looking to the horizon for some waves. How do you know which wave to take?

Pauline Rummel: It’s hard to say. It’s like you, you you get a feeling after a while. You. I don’t know, like, it’s just a feeling because you tried it a hundred times, probably before. So. And also a bit luck. You know, it’s both. But what do you think? You already did it too. So what’s your.

Gereon Hermkes: Yeah, so so the point I’m kind of trying to drive at is that, you know, like when people observe other people have success in business. It always seems like an overnight wonder, right? It’s like, okay, these guys were doing cure for cancer, and now they pivoted and suddenly they are making dozens of billions in sales in Covid vaccines. Right? Easy. They They’re doctors. They’re professors. Right? Yeah. They don’t see the hard work before, like, because nobody has them on, like, you know, nobody’s.

Pauline Rummel: I haven’t heard from the biotech company like I heard of them, but I never heard about the people behind, you know, I, I was not interested because they were they were probably inventing something before, but nothing like that important for the whole population. So I, I haven’t had them in my mind at all. That’s exactly the thing. Like you to come back to the surfing spot. Like you have a feeling which wave is good because you did it a hundred times before. But when you see the surface like riding the waves, you think there’s they’re pros, whatever. But you you barely think about that. They start the same level you did, you know.

Gereon Hermkes: And so I’m trying to so this week I, I talked to a young entrepreneur. Right. And so he went to school, went to university, smart guy. And now he paid his dues, right? He has some work experience. He has some money put aside. He’s having a good income job now. And he wants to. He wants to do more. He has the ambition, right? And I just love that ambition. Um, he has a family on the way. Uh, like a kid on the way. Has a family, and he’s trying to go places. Right. And good on him. Really good on him. And he was asking, carry on. Should I do this? Can you tell me more about this? I want to do this right. And I was like, hmm, hmm. And he talked about the other thing and said, well, do you think this would help? This would be really helpful, I think, in this regard, in that regard, it’s like, hmm, hmm. And then he was like, I think he was getting a little bit frustrated with me. And I was like, I’m not trying to be negative, but, you know, you came this far to get into a position where you can actually do something, right. You you paid your dues on learning how to paddle out, right? And you’re sitting there looking in waves. And to me, what it looks like is that you want to take the first wave that comes along, right? And you’re making a face. So. So what’s wrong with taking the first wave that comes along?

Pauline Rummel: It could work, but most of the times it won’t. Yeah. No. Yeah, I know what you’re trying to say. It’s like. Yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: And there’s actually like two parts to this. So the first one is. So let’s say the first wave is the right wave. Right. You’re gonna fall down. Right? Guaranteed. Right. And this is what entrepreneurship is about, right? You always hear about the people on the news that tried it the first time and immediately were successful, like the Zam Zam brothers in Germany, for example, or somebody in the United States, you know, they they tried it the first time and immediately they were successful. But what you don’t hear is that, um, this is first of all, this is not the rule. And often in these cases there’s some magic sauce to it. So maybe they grew up in a in a household that’s entrepreneurial. Right. And like everything they’ve heard from when they started talking, was their parents talking about business. Right. Or some other I don’t want to say, Chico, but you know something that gave them the leg up. And so, yes, you might catch that first wave and you might be able to ride it all the way down, right? You might, but that’s not going to happen. Honestly. No. Not realistically. Yeah. And so the lesson here is that you need to start catching waves to get your experience in and to fall down many times.

Pauline Rummel: Because just because of that, you know how to get on the board, like how to get back, like the right moves, you know. So it’s important to fail, I think, because otherwise you won’t learn and you won’t get a pro because maybe you, you you’ll be good, It, but you won’t be a pro because you don’t know how to react on different kind of, you know, conditions. So I think this is important to to fail. And so I’ve been in the beginner class.

Gereon Hermkes: What do you think most people in a beginner class do? Do you think they take this hard route and come back again and again?

Pauline Rummel: No. Absolutely not. Maybe they do like they finished. I think most of the people don’t even finish their class because they’re super exhausted. And they they can’t imagine themselves like being this pro guy, like riding the waves, looking good in it and like, having fun. You know, they just see the the pain, the suffer, the cold, whatever. So they just leave it like that.

Gereon Hermkes: Yeah. And I don’t know the statistics, but I think people think it’s fairly easy. Right. They see people on YouTube or whatever, and then they try it and they’re just completely shocked by it. And I mean, for people who haven’t done it, it’s it doesn’t matter if you’re fit, it’s extreme because you have the sun hitting you. You have the sand that is like rubbing your skin, you the waves. The salt is like getting into the wounds. Um, your muscles are gonna be dead within minutes because you’re fighting against the current. Because you’re not. You don’t know how to move against the current yet, right? Stop me at any point of time if I’m saying something wrong. No, it’s one hundred percent right. I mean, you now know it, but if you look at beginners, they don’t know how to move, right? And then they get hit by the board when they fall off it, or like, it gets lost and and like in my experience, like you said, most people don’t even finish the first session. They suddenly realize, wow, this is way more than I bargained for. It looks cool. I, I got that little video where somebody filmed me, where I was like, kneeing on the board or standing on the board on the beach for two seconds. I’m gonna post that on Instagram and everywhere. But yeah, you weren’t really surfing, right? I’m really seeing you on the board. Hey. I’m really looking forward as both surfing somewhere. Oh, yeah, I wasn’t talking about myself, but there I go. Right. Making the same mistake. Okay, so this is the first thing, right? You have to, um, get in the game and stay in the game. And that means a lot of pain, right? It means making a lot of mistakes, sticking with it. Um, and it’s not fun. You really have to have that mission in your head. You have to stay on target. But actually, it doesn’t stop then, because let’s say you are able to move out against the current and you’re sitting on your board, right? And the wave comes in, the waves come in. So you said before that you have to have some experience in, you know, like looking at the waves. So this means you have to catch a lot of waves. But even if you let’s say we are you in this situation, right? You have the experience. Do you take every wave?

Pauline Rummel: No. First of all, you have to feeling like which waves you should not take. Some of them are too big, just too big or too small. Whatever. And yeah, you know, some of them are just not not good to take like no. Okay.

Gereon Hermkes: And let’s say you see a wave that you think works, what happens then? Like some people have never seen somebody do they have just maybe seen somebody, um, actually standing on the board, you see a wave. What happens then?

Pauline Rummel: I’ll try to catch it. Okay.

Gereon Hermkes: And what does it mean specifically? How do you how do you catch it?

Pauline Rummel: Yeah. Like first of all, like when you see, technically I paddle away back and then when once it’s a good position to jump on your boat or step on your boat, you try to catch it and try to stand.

Gereon Hermkes: So is it correct to say that when you see a wave that you think this is going to be it? You immediately start paddling like, you know, like

Pauline Rummel: I’m still thinking about it. I’m still like, not sure until I really it’s closer and I really think, okay, I see it breaking already somewhere. And then it’s worth to, to try it, you know. That’s because you know, like if you, if you take the wrong one, you know, you already have in mind, okay, if I’m not standing this way, I have to go back outside again. I have to yeah. It’s getting hard. It’s painful because I just failed. And that’s why you really have to like. You really think it’s a process? Should I try? Should I risk it? And then once you decide to do it, you’re in already. So if you if you decided to catch this, this wave, there’s no way to like to abort. Exactly. Yeah. Gereon Hermkes: And see, this is why I think surfing is such a good metaphor for leaders and entrepreneurs. Because it’s just it’s it’s the perfect metaphor. So first of all, you have to really pay your dues to even get in the game, right? It looks nice from the outside. Everybody wants to do it. Everybody wants to be a cool surfer. But actually just getting out there is is a pain. It’s really a pain. And so let’s say you stuck with it. You catch the wrong wave. Like you said, you’re gonna be back on the beach. You you look at you look at the ocean and you’re like, oh dang. Yeah. And then right, so suddenly it becomes important to identify the good waves, right? Am I in a good position? Is this a wave that’s neither too large nor too small? Is it something I can do? How many people are around me? Right. Is is it packed? And I’m gonna be run over by some pros who are gonna beat me up on the beach afterwards because I got in their way. Right. It’s a war. It’s war. Right? And so, um, I think this is exactly how product development, new ideas, entrepreneurship works. So first of all, you need to pay your dues, right? And if we think back to that young entrepreneur that I was referring to, he paid his dues, right? He went to university, got a relevant degree, has work experience, has the money to actually do something now? Right. To invest? That means for me, he’s out on the water and in his mind because he’s ambitious, which is awesome. He was he wanted to get on the wave. I said, no, don’t take that wave. And he said, well, but the other one, I said, no, don’t take it, don’t take it. He was like, yeah, but I’m here to surf. I paid my dues. I want to take the waves. But the thing is, I think what you need to do is you need to look to the horizon and see what kind of waves could be coming there. Right? So right now AI is the big hot topic and there’s going to be new ones. And then you just said, well, as it gets closer right, the waves get closer. And I think this is exactly what you have to do. You have to keep watching them, keep watching them, keep watching them. Also, the business ideas say, okay, so this is this is nothing. I’m gonna let it go all the way away. This is actually something that could be really interesting. And then, and maybe this is just because I’m not as good as you, but for me, it really sticks in my mind. That. And probably because I’m starting late and not positioned well, I have to start to paddle like a madman. And then the wave is still already past and I’m like, what happened? Right? But this is what people do. They say, oh, right now, right. AI is very dominant in the public discourse. And people say, oh, I have to get on AI. I have to learn about it. Right. And we need to do something with AI, right? And some other people like the pros. They’ve been doing it for ten years. They’re like, hey, I’m already done with it. We’re like, we’re all set up. You can try to start to pedal as much as you want. It’s already past. Exactly right. And so I think when you said it’s really important to not commit to a wave that doesn’t work out for you, right. I think this is really key because if you’re young and ambitious, you always tend to go with waves. And I guess that’s something that you have to learn. But like often you commit to waves that don’t really make sense. Right? And so you lose your energy. And I think this is really key. I think this is very key because the young entrepreneur that I’m talking about, he’s full of energy. And it’s awesome. I wish I was that young again. Right. But you have to channel this energy. If you’re going to commit to some wave that doesn’t work out, you’re going to lose your energy for the real one that’s actually going to make a difference. And so I was saying to him, well, if you’re not going to be on the real wave, that means you’re not going to be able to make money to actually put something aside to actually pay the dues that you need to pay to be able to be on the water. And then what’s going to happen. If you’re losing money, then you’re going to be going to your wife or your partner. Right. And say, well, I need to spend this much money, or I need to spend this much time on that business idea. Right. And then she’s going to say, well, the kid is crying, whatever, and you’re going to be having problems in your life. Right. And so if you don’t commit your energy and time to something that’s really worthwhile, you’re actually going to lose everything that you already got, which is the possibility to be on the water. Yeah. Right. So you can’t waste any energy. And so that brings me to the next part of this. And this is actually about the BioNTech guys again. So they, the one of the founders, Ugur Sahin. I’m going to try to pronounce that correctly. Ugur Sahin, he was reading about the virus when it came up, I think in January twenty twenty. And he was reading about it. And they’re going to the next day. Right. They’re going to work. And he’s like, wow, here’s an epidemic coming up. And he had a feeling that this is the one, right? And so I find that interesting because a lot of people were seeing a lot of problems in the world, a lot of epidemics, but he had a feeling that this is the one, right? So he had the intuition, which is interesting. Right. So this is maybe the surfer’s intuition that he had from seeing a lot of waves. But what he did then is also amazing, because he says, well, okay, so this could be the one. And what he does is, he decides to dedicate the next twenty hours. That’s a lot of time, twenty hours to do a deep dive. So not a shallow dive. Not reading the newspaper for ten minutes or talking to some friends for twenty minutes, but actually dedicating twenty hours to the deep dive on the coronavirus. Right. And I think this is exactly what’s key. Right. So we talked about the rule of twenty. And the rule of twenty says, well, if you want to be able to be on the same level as the pros, you have to read twenty books on the same topic to be on a very high level in that topic. Right. But here he is, somebody who’s already a pro. He’s already a successful scientist. He’s a successful entrepreneur, successful founder, professor. He’s already on that high level. But he says, well, I still need to dedicate twenty hours to this one topic that I think is going to be relevant. And I think this is really important, because what I keep seeing is that people start this deep dive too late, right? And so they say, okay, I see the wave. I see the wave, I see the wave. But they never invest anything in analyzing it. Right. And so they just okay. So suddenly the wave is there and they say, well, now I gotta do the investigation, but it’s already too late. The wave has already passed by. And so I would say do the investigation, do the deep dive the twenty hours and do it as early as possible. And this is exactly what he did, right. Because he had that structure of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, our science days, he was able I think it was on a Thursday evening to immediately do a deep dive into this. And on Sunday, probably even before, but at the latest on Sunday, he had his analysis, he had done his deep dive and he figured out that, wow, here, there is a problem here. And, you know, especially if we talk about business agility and so on, people always think about the execution of stuff, about delivering a software, for example. But nobody ever thinks about this kind of stuff. Yes, they could have started to produce all kinds of stuff. They could have started producing masks probably. Right? I mean, they were as close to producing masks as they were producing vaccines, which is to say, not at all totally different business, right? Or air filters or something like that. So you gotta, gotta do that investigation to see where you’re going. Then. And I love these little pieces of information of how important and successful people do stuff Because here is a paragraph on on page eleven that talks about how he actually prepared an email to the manager. The I guess the money manager, the finance manager of the owners of the company or like the the financiers of the company. And he writes the email telling them, I think I’m seeing something here. Warning, warning. Danger, danger. This could be really big. We need some money. We need some backing to actually pull it off. And then he doesn’t send the email because he’s not quite certain. Right. And he lets it sit. And I’ve done this so many times. Right. It’s an important email. You know, it’s for him. He wants to convince them. But then he doesn’t send the email because he’s not quite certain. Right. And he lets it sit. And I’ve done this so many times. Right. It’s an important email. You know, it’s for him. He wants to convince them. But then for whatever reason, fear, uncertainty, whatever. He’s not sending the email. And I think that’s so humane and and so interesting to see. But at some point of time, he has, um, he has the conviction and he sends it out. It’s really funny because like basically every page of the book is is marked. At some point of time I stopped putting in markers because it’s, um, it’s just, uh, everything is so valuable. I actually think this book should be required reading in business school, because there’s so much to unpack here, so much valuable information on how to approach business and how to react, and how to be agile, like on a on a very high level that, um, yeah, it should be required reading. And the other thing that I found really noticeable is something that’s called Price’s law. And Price’s law means that basically, it’s just the same couple of people who always produce much more than anyone else. So if you I think it was developed when looking at scientific papers. And so they were looking at who’s actually writing the papers that are getting cited and who’s writing a lot of important scientific papers, and it turned out that it was always the same couple of people. Right? So if you have a scientific department in a university, I don’t know. Let’s just make something up. You have one hundred researchers. It’s going to be like three or four that are going to do like a massive amount of research, and you’re gonna have a lot that won’t produce anything or very little. Right. And so actually, this, um, Price’s law is something that you can observe in a lot of places. And I found it really interesting that both of them have produced hundreds of patents, hundreds of academic papers, have founded non-profit organizations before plural, and had established two billion euro businesses before actually starting BioNTech. Right. And I think and, you know, there’s always these comparisons to Tesla. If you apply to Tesla, they ask for one point, and I think they call it Prodigious creator. They ask you, have you ever achieved anything noteworthy in your life? Right? Have you created something? Have you invented something? Have you written something? Have you done anything that’s exceptional? Because they know of this Price’s law, and they want to see if you’re one of those people who has actually, you know, done something cool or great because the likelihood that you’re going to do it again for them. Yeah, of course it’s there. It’s super smart, right? And of course, there’s a limited amount of people who who fit that profile. But it’s very I think it’s very smart to be out. Be on the lookout for that. Do you actually remember that I asked you that question?