On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Khalid Machchate; accomplished 3 x exit startup founder, operator of a startup studio, board of director positions and now in his "NEXT ACT," Khalid is a member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed 6th, for the development of the Kingdom. According to Brenda, "Khalid checks many boxes as a guest to the Founders Sandbox. The topic we settled upon is Purpose, when we met for the first time his remark to me about after he found the podcast and later on the website of Next Act Advisors, my consulting business, "It strikes me that not many people are thinking about their Next Act in life." They walk through Khalid's origin story: growing up in a fishing village in Morrocco in a humble family; developing and selling his first software at the age of 11 years, and most recently; Khalid joined as the youngest member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee for the Special Commission on the Development Model by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed 6th, leading strategically the national development agenda through inclusive and sustainable public policies, technology and innovation. In conversations they share on how they intentionally and proactively work to provide a roadmap through digital transformation and human capital skill-up with clients. You can find out more about Khalid at: Linked IN https://www.linkedin.com/in/khalidmachchate/ https://khalidmachchate.com/ And view more of his content here : https://www.forbesafrica.com/under-30/2019/07/01/30under30-technology-category-2019/ https://www.bbc.com/afrique/region-41804783 Khalid Machchate: A Day in Our Digital Future | TED Talk A Revival of Fintech Funding in 2024 is Just a Pipe Dream... Or is it? | The Fintech Times Top 3 Digital Ways to Become the Best Leader Your Organization Deserves - The Good Men Project https://www.menabytes.com/startup-golden-rules/ Read an article by brenda on this topic at: https://nextactadvisors.com/next-act-as-a-prelude-to-a-last-act/ You can read the article in full by subscribing to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription. transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke corporate governance knowledge. 00:33 This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the Founder's Sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. As a thank you to Founder's Sandbox listeners. 01:03 you can use code sandbox25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:17 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox podcast is now in its second season. I am Brenda McCabe, the host. This monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. My mission is really simple. 01:44 I bring guests to the podcast who themselves are founders, business owners, corporate directors, investors, and professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests, including topics around resilience, purpose-driven organizations, and sustainable growth, 02:11 My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Khalid Machateh. He's joining the podcast today as an accomplished three-time exit startup founder, operator of a startup studio, board of director positions, and now in his next act. 02:41 He is a member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed VI for the development of the kingdom. So thank you Khalid for joining me in the Founder's Sandbox today. Thank you for having me, Brenda. Great. Well, you check mini boxes as a guest to the Founder's Sandbox. And I talked about business owners, corporate board directors, professional service. But this topic we settled. 03:09 upon his purpose. You know, we met for the first time and you'd actually spent some time on some podcasts as well as Next Act Advisors consulting website. And you remarked to me, you know, I don't think there are a lot of people that are thinking about their next act, right? And so we're gonna talk about throughout the podcast today purpose, Kelly's purpose and designing for his next act. 03:38 Maybe for my listeners, we'll get a glimpse of some ideas of how one's journey, professional and personal, really informs what your next act might be. So through Khalid's origin story, he grew up in a small fishing village in Morocco in a humble family. He developed and sold his first software at the age of 11. 04:05 And most recently, after many, many years, he joined as the youngest member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee for the Special Commission on the Development Model by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed VI, leading strategically the national development agenda through inclusive and sustainable public policies, technology, and innovation. We're going to hear a little bit more about a state visit that Khalid just had. 04:34 in the United States of America. No, in our conversations Khalid, we shared how we both in our businesses, we intentionally and proactively work to provide a roadmap through digital transformation and human capital skill up with our clients. There is more to discover with you today. You know, my journey of moving back to the United States after over 25 years in Europe really 05:03 became my why, became purpose-driven, scalable, and very resilient. And I took that into my business. What would be your tagline, Khalid, if you were to describe your journey? 05:19 My tagline would be probably the out of the box since we're talking about, you know, so we're in the Fambur sandbox. So it would probably be the most out of the box Moroccan. 05:49 has been, basically that is what I hear from everybody, from my family to people that I studied with back when I was in school, to people that know me now. It's the, you don't fit into any box that our kind of corporate world or business world has. And so, yeah, that would be my tagline. I love it. 06:18 out of the box. And again, on your journey, it was fascinating just to research not only your LinkedIn page, the many accolades that you've received over the years. But more importantly, you have your own website, Khalid Machate. And there I we hadn't touched upon it, but you are an active public speaker. And you have speak around different themes, technology, 06:46 business and entrepreneurship, policy and governance, and you also share your own story on the stage. So I'm gonna cut to the chase. I am most interested for my listeners at the Founder's Sandbox on your story. Of course. So my story can resonate with anybody that grew up in a very small town. So I grew up in a... 07:16 in a small fishing village in the south of Morocco. The reason why that is is that my father was a public school teacher. And within our schooling system, once you get a job as a public school teacher for the government, you get assigned to where you're gonna start your career. And so you don't get a say into where you're going. 07:42 And so while we were living in McNaas, which is the city I was born in, after a year of me being born, my father had his assignment and we got assigned about 2000 kilometers south. So in the village, everything is late. The event of internet is late. 08:11 News are late, opportunities are scarce, you don't get access to much. There are no associations for education or for children's activities. And so basically we always had to make up things ourselves. How to get entertained, how to find access to music, et cetera. 08:39 And so one thing that I kind of stumbled upon, because my father was interested in, was programming. So software programming. So my dad, again, public school teacher salary for to give you an idea is around $250 a month for, you know, when you're starting out your career. 09:07 And so he was trying to round up his end of months. And so he self-learned how to fix computers. And a few years into fixing computers, he started thinking, how can I add more to that service? And then started to learn how to program as he kind of fixed himself a makeshift computer at home from the pieces that he would get from each of the fixing jobs. 09:33 And so, and all of this, I mean, he had his job, he had his salary. So the self-starting and the initiative taking kind of came from there for me. It was definitely, you know, a C to learn in my case. My dad never told me to do anything, never taught me to code. 10:00 He was very clear on, you know, I do what I want with my time and I go and I enjoy myself how I want it. But the books would be left around the house, the coding books, and I got just curious and I started taking those books and using the software on my dad's computer and learning how to code. 10:26 And that was how I got to creating my first kind of accomplished software. Started around the age of nine and finished it at around 11, where I started sharing it with school buddies and then my teacher. And at first it was just a, you know, here you can burn the CD. 10:53 if you want to learn, it was a biology course, but made in an interactive gamified way. Because I got bored at biology classes. And so what happened was, I started giving it around, and a teacher of mine actually, not my father, told me, why aren't you like making any money out of this? And I was like, well, I just thought I could help out. 11:20 And I was like, yes, but that is a lot of value. You spend a lot of time working on that. And so, yeah. And so that's how I started selling the software. And then I ended up selling it to school to distribute to their students. And that's how my first- At 11 years of age. Our story. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, you're a- 11:49 a product of the public school system, humble origins, and in your public speaking, you are probably very influential in Moroccan youth today and other Middle Eastern environments, I would imagine. So- I hope though. That's your goal. So thank you. You then went on to- 12:20 create two other businesses, can you speak to them? And were they for profit or nonprofit? So to continue on the story, then around the end of middle school, that's where my dad was able to get reassigned to my my birth city, which was McNeist. And so I started high school there. Now, 12:46 going from where I was, again, where internet had only been introduced at that point, maybe a couple of years, three, four years before that. And so I started finding out that, oh, in the big city, there are a lot more opportunities. So there are associations for students that you can find internships and, you know, different opportunities to 13:14 learn more or to do kind of side jobs or to find also just potential clients because I was always still coding and still making little websites, little management software, etc. And so it just kind of made me aware that the world was a lot bigger than where I started. And at the same time 13:43 hanging out with my family and a cousin of mine introduced me to the culture of manga, which is the Japanese cartoons. Yeah, I was I think 14 at the time. And yeah, I loved it. And I started watching quite a lot of it while being fascinated by the culture. And so 14:10 At some point I started feeling that I was getting fluid and understanding what was happening on screen without having to read the subtitles. And I was like, oh, that would be interesting. You know, I already understand. Maybe let's try to learn also the grammatical aspects of the language so that I can, you know, say that I speak another language, which is Japanese. 14:35 And so yeah, I looked online, I found quite a few websites and quite a few forums where you could learn how to write, you could learn the grammar, etc. of Japanese language. And by the time I was in the end of high school, so the year of graduation from high school, I was fairly fluent and I could write well. 15:01 And so what I did was I got myself into an NGO, a nonprofit that was catering towards university students to have access to internships. And those, you know, you have local internships, but also international internships. This was an international NGO. And so I went to the NGO. I... 15:30 And please, guys, do not hold me up to this. I was 16 at the time. I lied my way through to tell them that I was a student at university while I was still in high school, just because I thought that it wasn't fair that I had the knowledge and I had the possibility of accessing this experience. But just because of my age, I wasn't able to. 15:58 to access it. And so that's what I did. I learned about a particular university and I started saying that I was from that university. Happily enough, they did not check any, you know, credentials and then didn't ask for my ID. I didn't have an ID at the time. Again, I was 16. 16:18 And so, yeah, I had my first interview in the space of like a few weeks after I was enrolled into the internship support program. I met with the CEO of the small company in shipping in Japan that were looking to hire an intern for to help them with their IT management system. 16:43 And five minutes from the beginning of the interview, the guy was trying to speak in English, and it was very hard for him. And so I said, you know what, we can switch to Japanese. Two hours later, the obviously I was hired. But not only that, the guy was saying, you know what, I cannot just hold you for myself. So I'm going to share your resume with all of my CEO friends. So basically, I became the 17:11 this monkey savant that's coming from the Orient, you know, speaking the language and having looking nothing like what they're used to. He shared my resume with I believe 20 of his friends and I ended up having I think five projects at the same time in the space of six months to do for all these folks. 17:39 in Japan. So that was my first international contract. But that's also that was the trigger for me to start hiring other people because well, I was overwhelmed by the amount of things that I had to do. And so I just tried to look for my friends that were you know, coders and hackers of time and people that could that could help me out and started paying them, you know, from from out of pocket. 18:07 And then thought, oh, you know what? This is not very comfortable. Maybe I can, you know, I need a structure to be able to do more, better invoicing or get paid better. And so that's how I created my first company, which ended up becoming my family office now, which is KNW technology group. And so just for reference, KNW technology group, now it's a, now it's a group. It's. 18:36 in five countries. I mean, we have offices in five countries, we have clients in almost 80 countries, we're present in Africa, Europe, Middle East, and APAC, Asia, and the US and covering the Americas. And so, you know, we have quite a large footprint. 19:00 But it started this way. It started by me. At the age of 16, although you fibbed your way through it, right? And learning a language. Amazing. Wow. So you've clearly owned businesses, scaled them not only nationally, but internationally, and at a very, very tender age. Fast forward. OK, we won't talk about your age here. 19:30 People can read them in the show notes. There's some articles for you to feature. So you can do the math and discover Khalid's age. You then struck out pretty recently and decided to obtain credentials as ESG leader with a certification that you pursued both with HSBC and KPMG. Can you? 19:59 What made you pivot to really going deep into ESG, which today it's like, at least in the United States, very front and center. You were a pioneer. So what made you pursue those credentials, Khalid? Thank you. 20:25 In my case, and this was part of the initial conversation, which was preparing my next act. So around, I believe 2018, 2019, particularly 2019, I started feeling that I was kind of ready to move on from managing the group. And so throughout... 20:51 kind of the 15 or something years that I was at the head of the group and developing it, you know, developing various startups under the startup studio within the group. And all of that was exciting and, you know, we were starting projects, but still the underlying structure that is that you're running a large company that answers to clients that, you know, does kind of major projects. 21:20 They all kind of start looking the same after a while. We've worked with over 20 industries. So we've done the rounds. And so now it became more repetitive and there's nothing new under the sun. They started feeling that disconnect. And I really wanted to, basically I had a succession plan in place and I was always thinking that 21:50 I needed to move on from this. This is now is a management play and I'm a creative person, not the best manager or I'm not just not as excited about managing an existing structure as I was starting things and building new things and tinkering with things. 22:16 And so even throughout the 15 years, I've had the great luck of having great COO. And so every now and then I would run away from my duties as a group manager. And I would go do something else. So I was the innovation director for the Abu Dhabi government for a while. I was the, you know, an expert with the G20 in Argentina. I was. 22:45 part of the World Economic Forum panel of experts in Davos. I did quite a few things here and there that mainly had to do with policy at the highest level, strategy and innovation and technology. And so that's kind of what put me on the track of thinking at the time. 23:13 in the early 2010s is the governance and the sustainability aspect is not as commonly talked about compared to profits and margins, top lines. 23:37 And that kind of made me think, oh, so people, when they think about, you know, companies and managing them, they're not thinking as much about the environments within which the companies are evolving, as much as they think about, you know, the ins and the outs of the company itself. So there. And that made me, you know, realize that, oh, I 24:06 do want to create impact here and how can I create impact here is by trying to integrate technology in a way that improves the relationship of a company to their environment and their impact on their environment. And so 24:27 in my next act planning was, okay, I'll transition out of managing the group and I will seek to understand better how to incorporate ESG principles into the board governance. And so the program, which was a full year program, 24:56 was a big kind of micro masters that was very heavily focused on use cases of actual businesses and that's kind of the specialty of KPMG and more on the financial integration from HSBC to 25:25 understands and become a well-qualified board director for publicly traded companies, foundations, family offices, but with a large emphasis on the ESG and on kind of changing the mindsets in boards. So our role as graduates of this program is not to be a regular board seat, 25:54 but to be the kind of change and impact board seat and to kind of negotiate our way into changing the strategy of the company or the foundation or the family office that we are in the board of towards more impactful environment. Excellent. So it started in the 2010s, you said, right? When you kind of cut out 26:23 left the business in charge of your COO, had the opportunity to influence policy, but technology related in the MENA region, and then got formal credentialing 2018, 2019. Still you were head of the wave, right? So you do think out of the box, right? So today you do sit on a few corporate boards. 26:51 for profit and not for profit. What I wanted you to share is some of the work you've done with charitable foundations, your family foundation is one of them, but also for the for profit. So can you speak to a few of the organizations where you have been sitting or you've turned out but you've been sitting as a board member, please? 27:21 role as board member was always, you know, my way of being involved within a particular organization where I can provide the maximum value for the minimum amount of time. So that's kind of how I approached my next act, which is I do want to have more of my time for myself. 27:50 But at the same time, I still want to have impact on a larger scale. And so that's how I both selected the organizations, whether for or nonprofit, that I joined, obviously, other than the fact that I, you know, my personal interests. But it was also my way of giving as much 28:18 impact and of my value and expertise as possible while respecting my own time and my own kind of personal engagements. So I'll talk a little bit about the first the nonprofits as I wanted to be able to touch upon you know all the 28:44 the mission related or my purpose related focus, which was always how do I improve the basic life services for citizens of my country and of Africa. This has been kind of a pulling. 29:11 a theme and mission for me for as long as I could remember. And so one of the activities that I've done is supporting Africa-based entrepreneurs to have access to international markets and to have access to international funding. And so I was on the board of Demo Africa, which was an initiative that 29:40 selected some of the best African startups. So what we mean by African startups is startups that are made by African entrepreneurs and founders and that are targeted towards a need within their market. So it's not a global company or FinTech right away. No, it's actually a company born out of a need that addresses an African market. 30:10 And so taking those, giving them all the tools, teaching them how to be presentable, how to be adapted towards the international market, all the while keeping their focus and their mission on improving the livelihoods of African, you know, of their country. 30:39 Yeah, and so I've done that for I believe three years. You know, in that in that time period, the organization has helped founders raise, I believe over 150 million US dollars. Yeah, my numbers are still I still correct. A lot of them have joined a major 31:06 uh, uh, renowned kind of accelerators like Y Combinator and plug and play. Um, and a lot of them have gone to, uh, uh, you know, establish in, in multiple countries in the world, but always having kind of this underlying mission of serving the continent. Um, so that's one, uh, second would be, uh, the tech green foundation of which I'm still on the, on the board. 31:31 This is a MENA-based foundation that is there to promote and celebrate impactful initiatives and people within the MENA region and supporting them into growing and having more impact across the region coming out of their particular country. 32:00 These are privately held, so there are a few NDAs involved. I'll share just a little bit of the underlying themes. So I'm on a family office board that has multiple holding kind of companies underneath the structure. And the reason why I joined is that because they wanted to 32:29 have a better way of quantifying their impact on the community and on also in bettering the way they track their different investments across the board. And so my role as an independent board member was to come in, both help them with understanding what the financial structures and governance models are that would best suit their multi-facility. 32:58 industry focus, but also how to integrate sustainable monitoring and evaluation practices within their strategic oversight and how to structure their long-term strategies with this in mind, with the sustainability aspect in mind. Another one is a scale-up, which is a larger startup. 33:26 for the lack of a better explanation. So a scale up, they've fundraised, I believe, four rounds till today. They're growing within emerging markets, which is one of the reasons why they've reached out. And so their expansion within emerging markets has found a few blockages with regards to 33:53 cultural contextualization and understanding the mechanics of emerging markets, which is one of the things that I've worked within. Again, the 80 countries that I'm operating, a lot of them are, actually most of them are within the emerging market category. And so, yeah. 34:16 My work was to support them, understand how to contextualize for emerging markets, understand that the regulatory aspects of each of these markets, and that they needed to account for that both from a risk management standpoint, but also from an operational dilution of culture and dilution of processes and principles. And so... 34:45 This might sound a little bit more technical, but obviously to our entrepreneurs and board director listeners, it might be kind of what they do on a regular basis. But I just wanted to give a little bit of insight on that. That is quite extensive. Thank you for that. And there is at least two common themes, either in both the nonprofit 35:14 for profit. It's all around contextualizing for emerging markets, the regulatory regimes around technology, right? And the environmental and impact and society, so ESG. So how it affects the livelihood of those people, stakeholders, be they employees, suppliers, 35:42 in the markets of these that these companies for profit serve. So there is a common, common theme there Khalid. You know, you've received many accolades. I'm going to name them off here, and they will be in the show notes. And I'll get to the question in a minute here. You've received the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2019. You've received 36:11 the United Nations 100 most influential people of African descent. And that was this year. The young Arab pioneer and 2023 Africa lion and entrepreneur of the year 2017. And I don't know whether I left any out. But are is there one that you felt was more rewarding than another in hindsight now? 36:43 Well, actually within the list, I mentioned mainly the ones that were a bit transformative for me in a way. I believe the tally now is about 30 international awards. 37:05 And so the ones I mentioned were mainly ones that came at a turning point in each case. So 2017 was kind of the one of the largest international expansion years for us. Okay. It was one where one of our startups was, you know, very, very well. 37:32 uh uh uh uh prized and and poised within the uh the the international scene um and you know we had accolades from europe from the u.s um uh but the fact that we've won the you know the the the the africa lion and entrepreneur of the year for me was um oh so um you know within my continent i am you know somebody sees what i'm doing 38:02 and I'm doing something right. Whenever you're in an international forum, you feel like sometimes you're the token piece of representation. That's either due to DI or whatever the case may be, right? And so I've come to appreciate 38:30 the fact that I would be the one opening the door perhaps for others. And so being the first on the G20 stage or at a World Economic Forum stage became a way for me to say, oh, so there, you know now that there's the possibility that you also as a Moroccan, as an African, um, become part of this, um, uh, you know, become also, um, uh, Forbes 30 under 30 or, um, uh, speak at a World Economic Forum. 39:00 But back then in 2017, again, I was like this, you know, company founder with all my focus being on how do I break my imposter syndrome? You know, as a 20 something year old, how do I get over the fact that I feel that everything is undeserved, whatever we receive. And so that was that that's why. 39:29 that is on the list that I shared with you because for me that was like, oh, so the, you know, the idea of you can't be a prophet in your own community. Well, we've broken through that. The United Nations one is just because that honors me as a person. 39:53 Instead of, you know, some of my companies or whatever the case may be, but that's not you actually made impact beyond the organizations that you've worked on that you've developed that you've made. And so it felt like a, you know, lifetime achievement award type thing, you know, it just happened on the year that I finally put the mantle of the manager of the group down. 40:23 And so it felt like a consecration and a validation of all the 15 years that I've worked towards and all the things that I've done. So it was like, for me as a person that I've done good. And the Forbes one was in 2019, which came at the time where I was thinking, oh, I want to leave soon. 40:51 And at the time, before that, we didn't have any fancy, you know, kind of world-renowned prizes. We had regionals, we had in Europe, we had in the US, but none of these kind of everybody knows it award. And at the same time, also, I was approaching 30. 41:17 And you know, the, the, the imposter syndrome part started kicking in again, saying, Oh, you, everybody that's anybody has had a 30 under 30 listing, you know? So for, for founders, uh, that's kind of the, the Holy grail that you, that once you get before 30, you're, you know, you're stamped in stone. And so, yeah. So it was, uh, it was really, uh, 41:45 a fun thing to think, oh, I've gotten it actually a little bit earlier than 30. But I got it and now I can relax and get over, you know, the fact that I get to the three zero, I got my Lister. A lot of these are actually imposter syndrome related but 42:14 and really putting yourself out there to be an example for aspiring entrepreneurs to see that you can think out of the box and become relevant in the business world, while also following some purpose, which is around sustainability, which is around human capital development, and providing opportunities for the livelihood of others. So. 42:44 there is that commonality. One, you know, when I was reflecting, reading your materials in Seneca, the Roman philosopher said, you know, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So for your last, it's not your last, it's your next and current involvement, you have been named the youngest member. 43:14 of the commission for the what is it called here? Yes, the Royal advisory committee, Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed for the development of the kingdom. You recently did a State Department tour in several states here in the United States. And while not, you know, revealing state secrets. 43:43 know, what was what is that like? How does that fit into your next act, Khalid? Um, of course. So let's, you know, again, one of the one of the things that I've done, and that, you know, 44:06 And that I appreciate doing. And I've done again throughout my professional career, getting out of managing the company was public policy regarding like around technology and how can different countries and states collaborate with each other for the 44:32 of their people's societal situation or socioeconomic positioning. And so since putting down the mantle as a manager, two things came to mind. One is that I wanted to continue sharing my expertise. 44:59 And that's where speaking, sitting on boards comes in. So I don't want to let all of the experience and all the richness of the things that I've learned, that I've practiced go to waste. And so that's one. And two, I want to be an eternal learner. Like I have been throughout. 45:25 my work as an entrepreneur. I want to always learn and always improve myself. And so the program with KPMG and HSBC was the first one on this journey, but I've also set up a few learning journeys, let's call them. And this- 45:54 to the US was one of them. And so the learning is by meeting all sorts of actors within the United States, whether it's public or private, around an open, secure digital economy. So talking about the subjects like cybersecurity, regulation for AI, development of digital economy, 46:24 understanding emergency management and all the things surrounding how to regulate also blockchain and cryptocurrencies and all of these things. So in three weeks, we've met, I believe, above 50 organizations from state actors to 46:52 US attorneys offices to companies like Discord or Plug and Play to universities like Carnegie Mellon and their centers for research and development to organizations like NIST. And so we've had quite a large panel of organizations that we've collaborated with and kind of had these exchanges. 47:20 of experience and knowledge, both from the US standpoint, understanding how things function within the US and what those organizations are working on, but also from our side to give them a little bit of what the rest of the world, how we view regulation versus the US's view, how we view the research and development paradigms. 47:50 etc. So this was kind of it for me. It was a learning journey but also a formal exchange with these organizations as you know a way for both of us to develop a better understanding of the state of the world of best practices from both sides and it was definitely a great 48:21 Thank you. You know, we were talking about your, your, the State Department visit, and I shared with you the largest seed fund in the United States of America is the SPR, right? And it's different branches, you know, National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, etc. And I asked if they're, you weren't too familiar with that, right? Small business. 48:48 Innovation Research, SBIR, and early, early proof of concept, phase one and phase two with $250,000, typically non-dilutive. That's kind of how the US does it. And the equivalent in Morocco, what were you sharing with me? Because I thought it was fascinating. Yes. Can you share? Sounds good. 49:12 So akin to the SBIR, which you mentioned during our last conversation, in Morocco we have an organization called, previously called the CCG, but now it's called Temwilcom, which is kind of a state investment vehicle. It invests in a lot of traditional environments, 49:41 as the state investment vehicle. It has also an SME and startup support vertical. It started, I believe about seven years ago throughout a co-funding from World Bank. I believe it was a 50, $50 million co-investment, so $100 million in total. 50:09 And it is structured for Moroccan entrepreneurs as follows. You have up to... It started as up to $20,000, now it's $40,000 of grants. So, full grant. 50:28 Then there is an addition of, it was $70,000, now I believe it's $100,000, $120,000. And it's cumulative, so like if you start the first one and you are at the end of the funding, you can request the second one. 50:48 The second one is what we call an honor debt, which is basically non-dilutive, non-collateralized funding. So basically, if your company makes it, great. Then you have, they call it a couple of grace periods, so I believe three or four years where you don't have to pay back. 51:15 and then you start paying back in small installments. If your company makes it, if your company doesn't make it and closes, that's fine. And there's no pursuit of recuperation of fund from your person. 51:34 And so, above this, so between the two, I believe we're at $160,000 between the grants, at least in the current edition, which starts this year. And afterwards, you get, I believe, up to $350,000 or $400,000, and that's dilutive capital. But with no, like, where the collateral or the guarantee. 52:02 is not made by yourself or by your business. It is co-sponsored by the state, so co-sponsored by this fund. So the organism of investment actually co-invests in regular VC and PE investment funds. To allocate a guaranteed section of the funds, 52:31 for these companies. So while the money is not all from the state, but the state covers the percentage that allows the funds to kind of skip over the risk management aspect and not request collateral or not look at the companies existing infrastructure as collateral, but 52:59 the percentage that is coming from the state is what constitutes the collateral in that case. Wow, and you know, you, there are probably a lot of Moroccans that don't even know that this exists. It's my own experience and my consulting practice when founders, particularly in deep tech. Have you applied for an SBIR? What's that? It's a fabulous instrument for non-dilutive funding and to really test your ideas. 53:27 So out of the lab and to potentially commercialization. Well, we're coming to almost the end. Every single guest that joins the Founders Sandbox podcast, I ask you questions that are related to really what I'm passionate about, purpose-driven companies, resilient companies, and sustainable or scalable companies. 53:54 What does resilience mean to you? And not one guest has the same definition or meaning, and it's just a delight to hear what does resilience mean for you, Khalid? So because of the way I grew up and because of the way I, you know, I structured all my businesses with zero regard to any particular business book, just because 54:23 I wanted to go on everything by instinct. And my instinct was very risk averse, which is weird for an entrepreneur, because my objective was to basically take care of my family, take care and support the development of my country and young people that did. 54:50 that were in the same situation as I was, which is not having access to opportunities and struggling throughout their schooling, trying to find their way through to a better future. And so that's why from day one, I've never asked anybody that I've hired for a degree. 55:18 I've never asked them to speak a particular language unless it was really necessary. I structured my company in a way where people can work on what they really want and they can change what they want to work on at any point in time. I worked on the agile model way before it was as much of a trend as it is in the past few years. 55:46 We've had work from home since almost day one. The office is there just for client meetings if the rest of the teams are working from home. Yeah, I mean, again, everybody, whenever I install some different policy in the company or even when I started the startup studio. 56:15 model, it was really just to enable myself and people from my organization that wanted to be entrepreneurs and tell them, you know what, your family, if you want to start a venture, or if you have a great idea, let's do it here. Why do you have to like try to go unsupported anywhere else and try to make it on your own? And so resilience for me was a personal 56:43 like a big personal thing. I've had quite a few interesting kind of runnings with health issues, you know, with a lot of... So I was in a wheelchair for a year, as after, yeah, after an accident. I had typhoid fever coming out of nowhere and the... 57:10 antibacterial resistant one, so 60% chance of not making it. I've had quite a few things along the way that were that made it very hard to do what I wanted to do or to develop my my business or to even think straight. And so resilience is a strong word for me because that's the only thing I see as kind of a 57:39 uh theme on me building my business. It's how many challenges and how many difficulties I've had to to to come through to be able to access the opportunities that I've had or to be able to develop uh you know my company just a passport you know how hard it is to have a visa to Europe or the US or anywhere else with a Moroccan passport it's ridiculous. So try it like making it to 58:08 to your meetings and to sign like a big client to only find that you've been refused a visa for some very random, stupid reason. So again, resilience for me as a person that came from where I came from has a very, very kind of existential meaning. I can see that. And it ties probably into purpose-driven enterprise. So purpose-driven. 58:37 define that? Those startups that go through your accelerators? I mean, what is that strikes you? Curiosity. The startups that ran through my accelerator, one was in education, one was in healthcare, one was in emergency. 58:58 support for. So you can see the purpose going through right there. And the the the health care one was because, you know, my my my, my mom was was going out, trying to find, you know, some some medicines for for my cousin who was staying with us at the time and couldn't find a single it was a weekend. 59:28 And so to find a pharmacy on the weekend, you have to be able to like go and see on the ministry's website, what are the names of the pharmacies that are open at any particular weekend and because they switch. So every weekend, it's different pharmacies that you have to look for. And so it was very inconvenient, very difficult to access. And so I was like, why isn't there an app that can show you on a map what is this weekend, the active pharmacy? 59:58 And then I was like, okay, so not only that, but every time you want to go to the doctor, you have to look for the paperwork that you've gone through your tests and whatever that you've taken from your last visit. Why don't, why wouldn't you be able to have that on your phone? And so, yeah, all of that kind of culminated to a health personal assistant that had all these functionalities. 01:00:23 into one app. The emergency services, again, my mom and dad had an accident. It was in the middle of the city and still they've had to wait almost two hours for the emergency services to come in because it was in a darker alleyway and they just, you know, they avoided a dog, I believe, and hit 01:00:53 kind of bad, severe accidents. Yeah, sequels from that. And for me, it was like, how come that we don't have a system that can notify emergency services to where you are instead of, you know, a person that goes into an accident, even when they're awake enough to call for, you know, the emergency services. 01:01:20 They have to find where they are, even though they're in another town or they're disoriented. They have to describe where they are to the emergency person. It seemed so easily fixable with the basic technology. And so for me, that's what purpose is, is that we can't change the world all at once. 01:01:46 But we can change the things that we see in our lives. And if we changed it for us and for people that are around us, that impact can grow. Because if you have that issue, it's very likely that others do as well. And if you change what's around you, that change will resonate. 01:02:12 with everybody around you. The last point I will make is the platform that I've contributed or led the development of under the OCP Foundation came again from this very basic belief that people were going to university, going for things that they didn't really 01:02:42 understand or want, they weren't well oriented when they came out of high school. And then once that either that curriculum ends or doesn't even end or they drop out because they don't, you know, they don't feel that they can contribute through that, or simply don't find a job, it's, you know, in biology or philosophy or whatever the case it is. 01:03:11 economic opportunity market. They, you know, what are they going to work in with a philosophy degree other than, you know, in a mall or in a restaurant. And so, yes, there's a lot of content that's available online for them to learn a new skill, but they have to pay for most of the things that give you enough credibility or accreditation. 01:03:39 to have access to higher value economic opportunities. And so I was like, well, there is companies in the world that have a lot of these programs that enable you to have access to the certificated learning pathways within particularly within the digital economy for free. 01:04:05 You just need to be an organization that's affiliated with this company and you need to basically do a little bit of work to fundraise or to get that kind of support. And so I was like, why would my the young people from my country and from my continent not have access to these just because it's not usual? 01:04:30 for non-profits or organizations from our continent to have access to these things. And so that's why I developed the platform. And because of who I'm connected with and people that I've worked with throughout the years and my presence internationally, I knew who the director of IBM CSR was and we've worked together on a few things before. 01:04:54 I had a direct relationship with the director of partnerships of Coursera, so I was able to reach out to him as well, or the CEO of Microsoft Africa. So these connections enabled me to go say, hey, do you guys have any problems with accrediting a non-profit in Africa to be able to disperse those programs that you do? 01:05:21 And then taking those programs and putting them into a pedagogically better structured environment for students to go through one, two, and three to be able to be certified as a professional of software development or design or data or cybersecurity. And so this is again how I view purpose is that. 01:05:45 seeing something that is wrong or that is that you want to change within your environment and stopping to think that you can't change the whole world. But if you just, every one of us actually tries to change the things that they can throughout their means and if they can stretch just a little bit further to be able to impact. 01:06:11 the person next to them, I think that we'd have a much better planet to live on. It was the Dalai Lama that said, be the change you want to see in the world, right? Exactly. Fantastic. Sustainable or scalable growth, what does that mean to you? When you see it, you know it, right? Yeah. Sustainable for me is when everybody within the equation 01:06:41 of your stakeholder circle is happy with you being there. So if your company is in a town where you made that town better, if people that work for you don't want to leave unless they're forced to. 01:07:09 The organizations that represent people that work for you, your clients, your beneficiaries, whatever the case may be, are all going along or aligned with your vision because of your understanding of your presentation and you being amenable to supporting those. 01:07:38 elements of your stakeholder engagement circle. For me, that's what sustainability is. And I mean it, obviously, in a perfect world, right? So obviously, you know, some organizations or some people will have ulterior motives, some will have, you know, more personal things to go along. And as you know, you know, corporate politics and nonprofit politics are real. 01:08:05 thing that you need to be careful of when you're trying to engage with your stakeholder circle. But that's for me, I still view it as to what to strive for. And if you, you know, strive for the stars, the land on the moon kind of thing. So if, you know, if that's the best or the perfect situation, how do you try to approach or to get closer to that? 01:08:34 Scalability for me, and I don't see them as separate simply because I could have scaled my company to 10 times larger than it is today. But the reason why I've chosen to stop the growth at a certain level is that because that was the ideal size for me to be able to retain my sustainability. 01:09:03 goals and to retain the humanness of my organization, if that makes sense. Obviously, it's not a choice for everyone, but I believe in that growth for the sake of growth is no longer a sustainable trajectory for the world. We're thinking 01:09:30 infinite growth against finite resources. How do you marry those two? And so for me now, giving the understanding to organizations that you can actually be profitable without growing in that kind of unruly, unmanaged, unlimited growth. You can grow. 01:10:00 with your stakeholders, you can grow with your community. It will take a longer time, yes, but it will also enable you to grow in a more healthy environment, to be more solid and more resilient actually, which is why a lot of these kind of unicorns and hyper scalable, as we call them companies, 01:10:26 You find them, you know, going into the ground a couple of years later, it's because they stretched what hyper growth is, and they've broken the chain of both trust and resilience within their organization. Final question, Khalid. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Yes, it was very, very fun. 01:10:51 Kind of, you know, you dug a lot out of me. I think the last point is something that I don't share as much just because it's not as, you know, I don't get questioned about it a lot, but it's definitely made me kind of re-remember how I view sustainability and scalability and purpose. So thank you so much for being such a... 01:11:19 both a graceful yet very investigative host. That would be great. And I thank you for the time. Again, we chose the title purpose designing for NextAct. You've taken us through a very fast paced and short period of time journey along the different 01:11:48 choices you've made personally and professionally. And I think you're well on your way to your next act and you've put the cornerstones in place. So thank you for sharing this. And I hope you achieved your purpose, which was for this podcast, which was not too many people are thinking about their next act. So I hope this podcast to my listeners, if you like this episode with Khalid Machate. 01:12:17 sign up for the monthly release. We gather founders, business owners, investors, corporate board directors, and professional service providers, and motivational speakers who checks a lot of the boxes like Khalid with his own journey, three-time exit founder, accelerator, sitting on corporate boards, and giving back through social impacts. 01:12:47 Thank you again Khalid and to my listeners, you can download and listen to the Founder's Sandbox. Again, there's a monthly release on any major streaming platform. So thank you, have a great rest of the day. Thank you, you too.
