Hassan Hankir - AI, Football and Doing What You Love

Founder's Voyage · Oct 05, 2023

Transcript

I made the first thing that comes to mind is enjoy what you're doing. I mean, do what you love, you know, because the fact that I've studied for so long and worked in such difficult fields and so on, like, I think it's because I chose every time to do something I love doing. So the fact that I play soccer every day and I took it like to this, like a scholarship level and all of that. And the fact that I love technology and keep doing like everything I do around technology just makes it enjoyable. So I'm sure that other people who would just thinking about entrepreneurship as an adventure or technology as a way to create a startup won't do it for so long because they wouldn't love it. So I think the biggest wisdom, I would say, from what I talk today and my journey is to live your life doing what you love. Our featured speaker today is an MIT boot camp alumni, mathematician, entrepreneur and research scientist passionate about perpetuating the development of technology that improves people's lives.

He also loves playing and producing music and playing soccer. Hassan, it's a great pleasure to finally have you as our featured guest today. Thank you so much for being willing to take the time to join us. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for having me and thank you for the intro. It's my pleasure to be with you all today. All right, so I can start by talking about my journey. So in the start with my education and then about my entrepreneurial journey as well and how I came back and forth to entrepreneurship. So I'm going to start with my journey. And how I came back and forth to entrepreneurship while studying as well to keep my skills up to date and all that. So basically I was born in Morocco. So this is where I started my life, I guess. And I played a lot of soccer. I just love soccer. So while I was studying and doing great at school, I was always playing soccer and doing all sorts of tournaments and all that. So to help me enjoy, I guess, the difficulty of studying in difficult classes because I was doing mathematics and like the most selective, I guess, like courses and all that.

So it was difficult. But every time I was thinking about the fact that we had a soccer practice after class made it all better. So, yeah, so I graduated from Lycée Lyotée in Casablanca. And after that, I got a soccer scholarship in the US. I started going by, I had like a couple of offers, actually, approximately like five schools, five colleges or universities that gave me offers. And I chose the one in Miami, which is like, which was a great start, I guess, of the US education for me. I discovered the US from Miami. It was amazing. You know, like it's a very touristic place. So there's a lot of fun things to do there and great weather as well. So it was great. After a year there, given that I was able to get good grades and all that, I basically wanted to get transferred to a better school. So I just hoped for like the great UCs because of the reputation. It is with technologies because I also like love technology. And it's just something I do, you know, in my pastime, like anytime I'm not playing soccer or studying, just checking the latest text and playing with the latest text and all that. Oh, yeah, I heard a lot about Silicon Valley since every time I was hearing about new technologies, it came from there. I was kind of hoping to end my professional journey over there. Would have been the greatest growth personally for my professional life to actually work in the Silicon Valley and all that. So this is why I basically like applied to UC Berkeley. So when I applied there, I transferred before getting there. I actually did an entrepreneurial journey, which I believe actually helped me get into Berkeley.

I didn't even think about it that it would do that. I just so basically while I was studying in Miami and then like went to a community college in California, I just was getting so interested in VR, virtual reality and augmented reality, because in Miami, I was working with this research professor who was developing like VR headset for medical use to like scan some diseases and all that, like with the AI headset. So basically that was my start in the VR industry. And yeah, so I just thought maybe I can like, I guess, contribute in this field and make it into an entrepreneurial journey. So that's actually how I started with the VR startup. My actually roommate, we were at the St. Thomas University in Miami together, also in the soccer team together. So basically he was the co-founder and we started the company. We founded it. We got an investor in Germany and we went to Germany. It was great because we were very, very early compared to all the others in the industry at that time. Like every time we went to a client to propose our services in VR, they were discovering VR with us. So for them, it was an easy sell. If we had come like a year after and they had already tried the VR headset, it would be, yeah, we know this technology. But we were the ones who presented to them, like the wall factor helped us sell. Do you mind if we jump in with a couple of questions about VR? Of course. I just want to ask you, what year was that? So the exact year, I think it was 2000.

Let me check it again to be certain. I think 2016. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I've been through the same stuff, but I'm here in Brazil, down here in Brazil. Things are so much slower. You wouldn't believe. So I started studying VR as well. So I bought all these goggles. I went to Google I.O. at 2016. They were presenting like Google Cardboard and stuff. And I found that so interesting and I started studying that. And it was such a hard sell. Oh, my God. And still is.

It's not easy at all. It's still it's not because the goggles not cheap. And, you know, all this metaverse talk that we had, like even Facebook changing their name for that. And it still didn't catch the public attention. And it's very hard to sell that, don't you think? Like, I mean, it's really interesting as a. But entrepreneurship is not a science fair, right? And well, that's interesting to know about restoring. Yeah, because 2016 was when you were at the boot camp, too. So you were doing this in the US market. Exactly. Yeah, this is where we started. Like, basically, when I when I applied to the boot camp, the MIT boot camp, I was telling them that I'm co-founding this VR startup. And this is the industry we got. And that's, I think, how we started at the MIT boot camp. We started.

All right. And so so what was your draw to to to VR? You know, like just initially, like, why was that the startup that you felt was right at the time? I think basically it because it was it allowed some people to have experiences that couldn't otherwise like this is what like made me realize the importance of it. So like if you can travel to a country and you still want to visit it, it's a very great experience. If you want to visit a house that isn't built yet, it's a very good experience. So like it's an alternative or something that isn't possible, which I mean, drew, I guess, my attention in terms of the value of the technology. So I like it brings an additional value to people who can't actually do something they would like to do. And I think that answers also the question of the sales difficulty.

Like it is expensive, but like gear to buy and all that. But for example, in Germany, we focused on the real estate clients. And those had the budget to build a huge house just as a demo of the other real estate proposition. But then this one was just a few headsets and a computer to do a lot of other houses. So for them, it wasn't such a drawback compared to what they usually sell their clients, their houses to. So like even though there were difficulties in selling the VR, I guess, service, they were like ways to actually just make sure that it's an additional value added. And that's it's like it makes sense for the client. And it also makes sense for the for the users who like cannot, I guess, have the same experience otherwise. Yeah, I've seen that. That that's one of the cells, real estate. And we have seen here in Brazil, actually, for kids when they go to the doctor to take a vaccine and they're afraid they have like a VR experience for that. So they don't even notice that they have in the. The vaccine applied, it's so interesting, but it's still so niche, right? It's it's very niche.

It's it's too small sometimes. So I guess that you're not you're not working with AI and data science, right? I am now. That was 2016. So many years after that, I am working. I know. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you you're getting all the the well, 2016 VR was the thing, right? And now AI is the thing. So I guess you're working with what is cutting edge technology like and you're very talented on that. And how how do you feel like, you know, you have this path to go and we all go through this with our startups. You know, I have a consulting company, so I feel that we always have to be changing. I started like creating websites and web apps. Now I have to work with mobile apps with other kind of things. We have to put AI on that. To help people use the app. So how do you see this challenge, the challenge of changing what you're doing to, you know, be doing what the market wants and and how do you choose what you're going to do? Because there are a lot of things to do. That's not just AI that it's booming now. We have so much things. So how do you choose the path that you're going to work with and study? Because it's I mean, I study VR and even though I did a course on an American school, I still didn't learn everything. So you have to really go deep dive on these topics and they're not easy to understand and stuff. So how do you see that as, you know, personally and also like as an entrepreneur? Basically, just to illustrate an example, when I started getting very interested into AI, it's when the AI algorithm won against the best chess player. So when that happened, I then realized, wow, this is a huge technology, which has surpassed already like the smartest human in a very like intelligent game, which is basically like these kind of tells these big events that happen in tech, I guess are some illustrations of, OK, is this tech going to grow?

Is this going to be valuable? Maybe I should look into it. So this is like the just illustration of some events. But in general, like my thought process is that I just like love a life technology and I love like futuristic stuff. So like I am always interested in what's going to be next, what's going to come next in the industry, in the technology and in development of humans, like it just like a passion of mine. So I just keep reading a lot about all of that. And then when I know all the possibilities that seem to be like going towards in technology, then I see, OK, so which one is going to be like now or in the next five to ten years? And this is when I spend my time on. Yeah. Oh, that's great. There's just one one thing that I wanted to know, just so I can let Ancel ask the next question, but just not for us to lose this opportunity. But have you ever studied something that it was useless in anything like you study something that it wasn't like applied, applicable or have you been through something like this? Because I have. I think personally, I think the latest one that I studied but didn't go further is blockchain. I know it's like a very potential future growth and I started learning it about it like three or five years ago, but I still didn't like put too much of my time on it because it's still just like a big question mark for me in its implementation. I know it's a very potential one with the Bitcoin and all the NFTs and all the growth that happens. It's still like for like just personally as a decision to spend my time on studying and working in it. It just hasn't been there yet. So this is an example of a technology I just passed on. I appreciate that answer. I think that's kind of a philosophy question, too, Daniel, because that has to do with our view of some of the side paths we take and some of the failures we go through, like how you see them. Was it a waste of time or did you get something tangible out of it? You know, so that's interesting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's now I have the experience to let some things pass like the Web 3 things as the blockchain.

You didn't study anything. It was it would be useless for me now. So yeah, I totally agree. So yeah, still taking time for things that are interesting. Sometimes you come up with ideas going back to what you were doing before, too. So building off of your journey, Hassan, I was wondering how has your experience in AI, in VR, in data science and analytics aided your transition into your more recent role as a scientific R&D consultant for Leighton? We're doing this for clients versus doing it for just one specific company. I think the transition is mostly about the diversity, because when you do it for your own company, pretty much every other technology that isn't used, you will not get to learn about or work on or anything. So you will definitely lose a lot just because of it making sense to keep developing your own tech with your own industry and your own products. So as opposed to working in R&D consulting, then you get a very wide it's very, very diverse in terms of technologies, industries and clients and just out of curiosity and like a willingness to learn about technology and the world in general. It's just a good I guess it's a good work to do at the same time while doing your own project, you know, to also like other companies and other technologies in any way you can just seems to me just makes sense to do that. So I wanted to ask something about the consulting business. So I've worked with consulting and also data science analytics pretty much my whole life. So when I when I went to class five of the boot camp, I pitched my idea. I wanted to create an AI consulting company so the AI would do the consulting and I would just count the money probably. Still, I still kind of work on something similar to that, but it's more niche now. But do you see like the future, especially on data data science and analytics that we can have some kind of automation, like consulting as a service? I mean, that my question is, I have to change jobs now or like in a few days. How do you see that? I think I think you still have time like the change in the marketplace that I will bring in terms of it automatizing things. I believe it's not going to soon enough replace the jobs where are like very specific because AI is very general. So even if you use it in my experience, when I used AI for any consulting or similar tasks, it required a lot of fine tuning on my end to actually like tune the result into what I'm looking for. So even if there's a lot of automation and possibility of getting a lot of knowledge from the web and other sources and all that and created in all of this, like the human brain is so far for the development that has happened so far, the human brain is necessary in the before using it, during using and after using it. AI is a tool right now in the consulting. That's what I like, like what I experienced. And then I don't know in 10 years what will happen then. Maybe let's see if OpenAI will do some AGI that will just replace everything. But so far this is how it is now, I guess. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, I have 10 years to make my retirement plans, probably. It was a good answer. I really wanted to know what you thought about that. I totally agree with that. That's a good personal question too, right, Daniel? Yeah, yeah. But I think that's good, though. I think one of the things I really like about this group is the ability to kind of zoom in and then zoom out to like that long term picture as well. And I think Andrew, unmuted, Andrew, did you want to ask something?

Feel free. Yeah, I had a question. So first I had a comment about the whole thing about, you know, something that you learned that is, I guess, for the lack of a better words, useless. I don't necessarily think that anything that you learn is useless. It may not necessarily manifest in the way that you think of until when it's actually needed. So I don't necessarily think that anything that you learn would be useless in that sense. The question that I had was in regards to the training of the AI. One of the more recent articles that came out was these freelance workers that were labeling AI training in the AI training process at $15 an hour. And so I'm curious to hear your thoughts as it relates to, you know, the I guess, shall we say, the dark on the belly of artificial intelligence and the process that still requires humans in the loop in that sense? Yeah, I think I heard a lot about these freelance new jobs about I don't know how they trained AI actually. They actually trained the whole like the whole whole code and the whole algorithm or just like train the last layers, I guess, just to to be able to use the API. OK, I was saying that there was a labeling process of identification, for example, you know, if it was an image recognition, it would label like this is a dog, this is a cat and stuff like that. So it still requires humans in the loop in that sense.

Yeah, so I think so. Yeah, basically, these is like type of coding. And I think they are like a great use of the like the AI open sources that are out there because like they are able to like remodel some of the great texts that have been built by a company. And then, for example, of image recognition that you said, or look or even like the one I tried like transfer learning for paintings, like the fact that there's like a huge amount of work done by a company. And then they just with a huge amount of resources and a lot of employees and all that, and they just open source it and other freelancer can just tune it for their own use. I think this is like a great use of the AI for the marketplace, because otherwise there's going to be just a few companies that are able to use this very useful tool. And on the others, like alternative is like these companies give the opportunity of the others to also use it for their own cases. I think like it's a great development, like personally, that's what I see it because I also personally used it. While I was studying for like some deep learning class, I just took an open AI. It took me one hour of code to like transfer the style of a painting of Van Gogh to a picture I took of the campus. And that's like, I think this is very valuable to be able to do that, you know, once a tech is developed with a lot of resources and a lot of research scientists behind and that are given to others to be able to reuse it for other like other cases. I think this is like personally was great in my in my education for sure. And I also think it would be great for others as well.

Thank you for the great answer. I really appreciate it, because, you know, as as Andrew indicated, it's definitely some of us look at AI as like not just like, you know, it could choose one of two paths. But like, how how do you make sure that I mean, not just that it's used for for good, but like monitored so that the parameters stay helpful. I don't know if that's a good way to verbalize it. But, you know, and who who should be regulating it and monitoring it. And I think like something I know is important to you is that it's it's the creator themselves. I was wondering if you have any examples of AI that you don't like. It's interesting. And I don't like it's very interesting. I haven't thought about this question. Maybe the ones that are connected with robots. So like, this is not a path I want, I guess, humanity to go towards. Yeah. Once you have connected with robots. Oh, interesting. Too many futuristic negative events for humanity that are possible. But when it's AI just in your computers and stuff, I guess just as an imagination exercise, that's where I would draw the line of AI that I don't like. Like 60s sci fi movies.

Like The Terminator. Yeah. Hassan, I just wanted to ask you, are you a big social media guy? Like you use Facebook and stuff? A little bit. Yeah. Social media, Facebook and LinkedIn. And I'm getting into Twitter as well, but just didn't get the time for that. Yeah, Twitter is OK. They release their algorithm, right? So it's fine. We can check it out. But I mean, I think my personal opinion, I don't know if you can agree on that, because I think the worst algorithms are the ones on the social media, probably because they get you addicted and they can make you inside a bubble so big that you think everyone else is just crazy that they don't agree with you. So I think that's worse than robots, in my opinion. I don't know what you think about that. I heard about that as well. How? Yeah, like I think it can be a very negative loop when you use these algorithms. But like what I think, though, is that if the companies that are putting these algorithms into your feed, they can just adjust them for it not to be like that. You know, I think it's an easy fix. As soon as they hear about the negative effects. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Easy fix. Yeah, yeah, I agree on that. Just getting back to your last answer before this actual question. You were talking about using external libraries and APIs from companies like OpenAI and others. So I started when I started with AI in 2017. I was really excited to learn and to be a mathematician as you are. And to go through this this role of learning math and, you know, working with my own algorithms. But I visited IBM in 2016, a year prior. And when I started studying AI and I had other stuff to do, so I couldn't like really focus on that. And I realized that IBM, when I had the meeting with them about AI and we were planning to use their product on ours as an API or SDK, something like that. They already have patents on some algorithms. So even with we come up with the same thing, we will still maybe have to pay some royalties for them. Even though like we come with a similar if we don't check like the patents and we actually find it. And so that got me a little bit less interested on creating my business around AI with my own algorithms. So I started to think more on using algorithms that already exist if they are sold as a service like Google does it. Amazon does it. IBM does it. OpenAI, it's not as open anymore. It's a private company now. So how do you see the future of that? Like is it worth like creating your own algorithms or it's better to understand these APIs and these products as a service on AI? What do you think the path for an entrepreneur, not like a scientist or a person that works on Amazon or IBM or some?

Big company like that. What do you think for us like consultants and people that want to create their products? It's better to learn these APIs or to try to create your own algorithms? I think it depends on the time you're hoping to get to market or to give the result or sell it to your client. So if you have just a few months of work, then definitely the APIs are the way to go. And if you want to give just a very like not so great result, if you have years, then it might be worth it to actually develop your own. But then you should also keep in mind, like as a startup, if you want to spend years developing your own algorithms, then other Google and Microsoft and all of the big IBM, all the big players are also doing that. So you're competing with them and their resources. So is it worth your two years spending time on something that they will most likely give an API to everyone else? So it's just a decision of where you want to put your time. So how long do you have until you want to give your product to market or your clients? Whether you want to like what type of product you want to do, one that competes with all the other algorithms out there or some niche market that it's worth spending two years developing on?

Or so on. I think this seems to be like how I would think about it when I want to decide whether to use an API or develop my algorithm. Yeah, I mean, what I think now is just like if I if I'm going to launch anything, I'll just use an API like to launch it quickly. And if the if it's worth it, because sometimes it's cheap enough for you to pay the API and still have a lot of profit. So maybe that's a good path out also. I think like you don't have to have a scientist or a very talented person on algorithms to do that. So if you're a programmer, it's already hard to be one and also have to be a mathematician or, you know. So, yeah, I'm giving this advice for a lot of people. So I just wanted to confirm that it's it's a good advice. Definitely. I mean, I agree, because not only is it easier to use all the APIs, you don't have to be a mathematician or a scientist to use this great technology as a tool for your services or product. But also, I think like for all the five past years that I've been like, like keeping updated into AI. Look, a lot of companies just keep giving new and new services in new APIs, new techs. So like if you want to get the latest up to date tech and to be able to use it quickly, the APIs are definitely worth the money they charge for. All right. So, Andrew. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, I appreciate your point of view on that. Yeah, in a comment, too. I love the comment. I think Jarvis and Iron Man is great. I'm wondering if that's a comment to talking about AI as it relates to robots.

But Andrew, did you watch all the movies? Because that goes wrong, too. His follow up regarding his other question, so about the $15 an hour jobs labeling AI, it feels like inequitable in the sense that the founders are making big, big money and the grunt work is minimally rewarded. Yeah, it's a difficult question. I haven't thought about it enough in terms of where the money goes to. But I think like the salaries I know are of Google data scientists and they are really well paid. So I think these type of companies actually do reward the coders. But then I'm sure other examples of like the freelance online that are not as well paid. And that's definitely like not giving enough money for like very skilled people who are using the tech. So I think it depends on the case to case. But I also heard about the companies making a huge amount of money in terms of profit for using that. And a lot of others, I mean, like who actually is losing that money? Like it's difficult to express when an API comes out and it just replaces a lot of other jobs. So all the companies, instead of paying these people's salaries, they will just use that API for cheap and it will make them money. And the API provider will have a huge amount of money.

Well, then who's actually the person who's losing the money? That's where I think the focus goes towards. Like the people are actually like losing the job from these automations. And like as for salary of developers, then just it's a case to case. I think you did a really good job addressing that in a general sense, because it does come down to specifically what application you're taking a look at. Well, I have a question, but Andrew, did that answer your question or did you want to add to that? Yeah, so I just want to say, you know, technology is a good sort of tool to break down barriers. But also at the same time, you know, when used in a way and not in a way that shall we say is fair to developers, to everyone involved, then it begins to become even more of a tool for the haves and the have nots. And especially now, so I'm working in the Midwest, I begin to see a lot more of the have nots being forced to take on roles that pay the same.

You know, as say a grocery job or whatever that might be intact, but they're not actually getting the true rewards of what tech had promised originally. So I'll just say that, you know, that that I think is a challenge. And so, you know, always a question of like, you know, don't be evil. Well, that last part didn't sound like a question, but I agree with that statement. It's always like I, yeah, I'm from a, let's say, developing country, right? So we are really early adopters to anything regarding technology. We have a lot of time using Internet here in Brazil. It's just like a really big thing. It always has been. We are always like really interested on new technologies. But I do see that Andrew talked about, like, at the same time, the technology creates opportunity. It also create barriers. And some barriers here are even worse to overcome because you have to overcome different kinds of challenges. And we are so much quick. We are so quick to adapt to these things. And sometimes I just wish I didn't have to carry a smartphone everywhere because we even to park my car, we don't have like those things that you insert coins like you have in the US. I mean, the last time I've been US, I've seen those things there.

I don't know. It's been like four years that I don't go there. But anyway, you still have this option here in Brazil. Don't have that. If you park your car, you don't have a smartphone. You have to find a place that sell you a digital parking ticket. And there's no like nothing that comes with a paper or something. So as you get older or if you don't want to have a smartphone, you don't have that option anymore. So you have to buy one. And for the less fortunate, I think it's really restricting. Cars are already expensive. So you also have to buy a smartphone and stuff. So yeah, I totally agree on that. It's you know, and I appreciate your point. I think it's hard with AI that these a conversation about AI starts to become about ethics. You know, it's not a bad thing. It's just like one of those things that I'm sure anyone in that industry navigates from time to time. If it's OK, I would kind of like to transition our conversation back to the application of AI because I was recalling in looking through your work, Hassan, that back at boot camp in 2016, you and I had had a very brief conversation. And I'm sure that both of us are really exhausted because I can't totally remember like the ins and outs of it. But I remember talking to you about the human aspect that is needed in behavior change and the AI application. And could AI kind of take the place of a therapist or is a therapist really the best option?

Is there something else that could be helping this person? And now there are so many different products out there at this point. So I guess I'm kind of curious, what do you see at this point as the limitations, if any, of AI kind of replacing some of the humans that we rely on to help us in these roles, whether it be a therapist or a fitness coach or any other sort of human you would interact with that you need some advice and guidance from? That's a great question. I actually have thought about it a lot. This is a question that comes often in my studies and research. The question is, what can't it replace? So that's the kind of scary part of it. But I think that the human value is going to stay no matter how much development AI will do for a lot of jobs, like the therapist or any medical assistants or like doctors. I think all of these jobs, our teachers as well, all of these jobs will just be AI tools for the humans. I don't imagine AI being better than humans in that. I imagine humans using AI is better than just AI, no matter how far, how much development AI can get. This is how I see it. I see that these some jobs that are definitely certain to keep humans actually working on their job are just to enhance them with AI tools. But then unfortunately there's other jobs where it's now difficult to give this argument because I guess call centers, these are just phone calls that you speak to and it's already existing technology that does better results than any human on a call center. It's like for almost all languages already. Fortunately these are the type of jobs that are, if they haven't been already replaced, they will certainly be replaced in the near future. So I guess this is like, these are some jobs where, yeah, these are some jobs where the replacement of automation of the tasks are easily done by AI and in a better way. But then the others where they require human interaction or like human thinking and analogies and all of the things that isn't technological. These are the ones that are certain to stay, I think.

Thank you so much for that thorough answer. Of course, of course. I mean, again, I keep thinking about this question every time I think about any job. So if you have a job in mind and you're wondering if it's going to be replaceable and automatized, just ask me about it and I'll tell you what I think. But I heard a lot of, for example, lawyers, I heard a lot of AI technologies that give hugely valuable tools to lawyers, but they're not going to be going to court. So I won't go to court. It'd be just going to be a lawyer using the AI tools. Yeah, we do have some stuff here being applied here in Brazil on the judiciary system. The judges are using AI to better judge some cases and if they have similar cases, they already have the judgment for the next one lined up by AI. Yeah, it's a tool, right? It's not doing their job, but it's definitely accelerating what they can do. Especially in the case of judges, because you have limits on that. You can't just hire these guys. They have to go through all this ritual of having a test, having the interviews, having to have the vacancy for them. I do see that it's a very good tool, but I would add that not always just AI can replace people. I've came to some situations and maybe Hassan can probably give his perspective on this, but we come to the client and we look at a department. They have all these people working with some repetitive operational tasks of maybe inserting products into a database or just inputting that data. You can just simplify that with a simple code of a computer script. It's not even like an AI algorithm. It's just really rudimentary thing. It's just organize pictures and the data with the same name and put on a folder and the computer does the rest with some maybe like Python or any other different language of a script. The thing is now that we have this on media, media is saying that AI will replace, but we already have been replacing jobs with simple scripts, not even AI. I think it came to light just because AI is a very hot topic now, but that's been happening for a long time. I mean the example that comes to mind when I think about that is just like computers or the internet. There were so many jobs where people were writing in papers, but then one computer came and just replaced all of them and it enhanced all of the others in terms of services and products and development. Those that were writing instead of typing just got rescaled to another job. I think just a similar illustration is the start of the computer use in the industry or the internet in the industry. All the big technologies and the changes they do in societies, they're just similar. AI is just doing the same thing. I wanted to change topics now. And Nancy said to me that you're also working on teaching and I found it fascinating. I launched my own course and I had mixed experience with good experiences and some not as good as I wished it was, but it still is very rewarding to be carrying your experience and also helping people to learn more. So Nancy, go ahead, Nancy, ask the question. I think it's so great that you're so multifaceted and I feel a little bit guilty that we spent so much time on AI even though I think it's a really fascinating topic. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your teaching experience at Ed? Do you say Ednav or Ednov?

Ednov, yeah. Okay, and kind of how you got into that role and how you like being in the professor versus consultant role? So basically it started with just tutoring in STU in my first university in Miami. This is when I started my first experience teaching and it's just something that I realized I was enjoying doing and it's a fun job to do, to be honest. That's also important, I guess, sharing your knowledge with others and not just learning knowledge to use it for yourself. That's also a philosophical question about that. So since then, I just like from now and then tutor some students. I keep tutoring students and just lately I thought also about doing an online course. I'm also going to use Udemy. I'm just working on it as well. So yeah, I thought of just a different platform to teach instead of doing one-on-one tutoring. Maybe if I do just a Udemy class and post it that could be useful for students. Daniel, if you can give me any advice on that, I'd love to hear them actually because I haven't posted any Udemy class yet. It's hard to give advice on this topic actually because it depends on so many variables. My problem was that I launched a course and I was like, I'm going to do a course on Udemy. My problem was that I launched a course and I thought that the market wanted something, but once a thing that is a little bit different, like when you launch your own course, you have to really know what people want. So yeah, I haven't been working on a new course, but I'll work on that like in the future. I'm working on free material for YouTube and tutorials and stuff, and it's really amazing to give it for free and it's rewarding. But yeah, I'm probably going to launch a new one in the future, but I don't have any advice besides that, like really trying to understand what the market wants because at the end of the day, teaching when you're launching your own course is just like launching your startup or something.

So you have to solve a problem that exists. So I did have some students that were successful, but the problem is to advertise the course was too expensive and it was hard to make a profit of that. So yeah, I mean, that's the only advice I have. I mean, that's great. Interesting to hear. What about the free courses you posted? Did you do any advertising to generate revenue from it? I'm not advertising anything. I'm just doing organically. So I do get money from ads and sometimes I have like companies that partnership with me so I can referral to their products or service, some related with the content I'm doing. So I'll launch that in English as well in the future. So yeah, I will share with the community the work that we're doing so we can maybe in the future have a talk about this here in the podcast. But now I just wanted to ask you something like working as a consultant and as a professor at the same time, or like, do you feel like consulting is also like maybe teaching? Because I feel like that because people are paying you to analyze and understand and then give them qualified advice or teach them things that they don't understand about their business and stuff. How do you feel that? That's interesting. It is similar when you think about the content. It is similar.

I didn't think about that. But definitely when you do like a consulting project with the technology itself and you try to understand it and develop it and then also explain it. So I guess yeah, there is a very similar like aspects of consulting and teaching. That's a great question. So before we end, we usually ask kind of what we call like our words of wisdom question. No pressure. But I'm wondering, what do you want us to leave with today? What do you think has been the best lesson or takeaway from your journey so far? Or just some words of wisdom that someone else gave you that you might want to leave us with? That's difficult to answer. Words of wisdom. That's interesting. I made the first thing that comes to mind is enjoy what you're doing. I mean, do what you love, you know, because the fact that I've studied for so long and worked in such difficult fields and so on, like I think it's because I chose every time to do something I love doing. So the fact that I play soccer every day and I took it to this like a scholarship level and all of that and the fact that I love technology and keep doing like everything I do around technology just makes it enjoyable. So I'm sure that other people who would just thinking about entrepreneurship as an adventure or technology as a way to create a startup won't do it for so long because they wouldn't love it. So I think the biggest wisdom I would say from what I talked today and my journey is to live your life doing what you love, I guess. Thanks so much, Hassan. Wow, I really appreciate so much your thoughts and everything you share with us and taught us today. I mean, I felt like I have entrepreneur, a professor, a consultant, and a very friendly person in an interview. And it was really nice to have today your presence here in our discussion really did a great podcast for us today is not just because I relate with all your history and all that you experience, but also because you have gave us very good advice and shared experience you had, you know, like coming with your company with the VR thing and then AI and it was really interesting to have you today. And so well, we we're so happy to have you here and we feel so, so fortunate to have you being part of the founders voyage community. And we hope to have more opportunities to follow through your career path and all the things you're working on and in the teaching job, everything. It's so interesting. I love it for all the great words. And it was my pleasure, by the way. Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was really great talk. And I hope we have more opportunities for do that. Definitely, definitely. It was my first podcast, by the way. So it's a great experience. Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot for having me.

Yeah. And I thank Nancy for inviting me because I'm not usually co-hosting here at sometimes. I just hop in when Spencer can't, but it's always a pleasure. And it's always like really good to be here. Definitely. My pleasure. Don't hesitate to contact me. I've actually been listening to the podcast these couple of weeks as well. So I'll keep loving them as well. So I'm always here. Don't hesitate to contact me for anything else. Sounds great. Thank you so much, Hassan. And I definitely look forward to speaking with you more in the future. I feel like we've just barely touched on your journey. So we'll probably ask you back as a guest at another juncture if that's OK. Thanks so much, everybody, for making time. And thanks, Daniel, for your great questions and perspective, too. We'll definitely have to get you rotating as a co-host much more frequently because I love the unique perspective that you offer. And that's a beautiful thing about this community.

I feel like we kind of share a like-minded philosophy in some ways, but we're also incredibly differently skilled. Thanks so much, everyone. I hope you have a really great day or evening ahead. Thanks so much, all of you. And thanks, Nancy, for the invite. I'll be joining more as we just... It's just a pleasure. So thanks so much. Thanks, Hassan. I'm happy that you're happy to participate in because in the future, we will have some other opportunities for talking a little bit more. So glad you'd love it. Here. Bye. You've just finished another episode of Founders' Voyage, the podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. The team at Founders' Voyage wants to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you enjoyed your time with us. And if so, please share this with someone else who might enjoy this podcast. You can also support us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and by donating to our Patreon. Outdoor Music Today is Something for Nothing by Reverend Payton's Big Damn Band.