Power Moves: Eren Aksu with Mishal Thadani
Eren Aksu, co-founder and CEO of ThreeV, catches up with Mishal Thadani, Co-Founder and CEO of Rhizome, on Episode 46: Power Moves.
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Episode 46 of Venture Everywhere is hosted by Mishal Thadani, co-founder and CEO of Rhizome, a company offering advanced climate risk mitigation for communities and businesses against extreme weather events. He chats with Eren Aksu, CEO and co-founder of ThreeV, an insights automation platform for asset-intensive industries, starting with power and utilities and expanding into oil, gas, and public infrastructure. Eren shares his journey from augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to creating an insights automation platform. Mishal and Eren also discussed social impact in their work and the need for innovative solutions to address real-world problems.
In this episode, you will hear:
Consolidating diverse data sources to build effective models for utilities.
ThreeV's core values—mission, mastery, and moral integrity for a transparent, collaborative work environment.
Executive buy-in for innovation and the collaborative nature of the utility industry.
Combination of timing, product, and the team for ThreeV’s success in the market.
AI’s rise and its opportunities for innovation and efficiency in the utility sector.
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Jenny: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere Podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:21 Mishal: All right, hello, my name is Mish Thadani. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Rhizome. We're on a mission to make electric utilities and the power grid more resilient to extreme weather events.
00:00:31 Mishal: And first things first, thank you to the Everywhere Ventures team for allowing me to have this conversation with my friend, Eren Aksu. Eren, would you like to introduce yourself for us?
00:00:43 Eren: Yeah, happy to do that. Very nice to be here. Eren Aksu, CEO and co-founder of ThreeV. We are an insights automation platform for asset-intensive industries, starting with power and utilities, but moving quickly into the oil and gas and public infrastructure as well. Nice to be here today.
00:00:58 Mishal: That's great. Eren, first of all, just catching up since it's been a few months. So looking forward to hearing what the latest is and what you've been up to. But before we give folks what the latest is, why don't you tell us a little bit about your backstory and what your road was to really becoming this inspection technology guru that you are today.
00:01:17 Eren: Yeah, no, thank you for asking that. It's definitely a unique way of getting into enterprise inspections. I started off my career in the spatial computing world in AR/VR, back when I was at college at University of Virginia. I got pretty interested in augmented reality. I'm originally from Istanbul, Turkey, which is a big hub of history. I'm a history buff.
00:01:37 Eren: So I've always found it very interesting to have a history come to life through technology using something like augmented reality. And augmented reality is really close to its cousin, I would say, computer vision, because you need to be able to detect what's happening in the real world to then get information back into the real world, which is the augmented reality portion.
00:01:56 Eren: So in college, me and a couple of buddies of mine from Los Angeles, we started building some augmented reality-enabled history applications. We won some pitch competitions there. And then in 2014, when I graduated, I moved to Los Angeles to be closer to the hub of augmented reality technology.
00:02:14 Eren: I had an opportunity to work at the Interactive Media Research Labs at USC, where I was then the second full-time employee for a startup called Emblematic Group, where we were doing research and a lot of beautiful content around empathy building using virtual reality content.
00:02:30 Eren: So I did that for about three and a half years, helped scale that company from about three, four people when I joined to about 30, 35 people at its height. And then, 2018, I joined Deloitte to try and lead some of their augmented reality, virtual reality, spatial computing efforts.
00:02:48 Eren: There I had an opportunity to work closely with our CIO and our CTO at Deloitte Consulting. And I was really becoming at the epicenter of augmented reality, spatial computing and artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, where I saw a lot of use cases for the enablement of the frontline worker.
00:03:06 Eren: So how can we use augmented reality or artificial intelligence to help frontline workers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers, the DOD, maintainers, field service professionals, do their jobs faster, better, safer, stronger, using those two technologies?
00:03:24 Eren: I was able to then build a book of business around that at Deloitte and help a series of different industries. I had an opportunity to work with a lot of oil and gas clients, power and utility clients. And I saw, really this missing gap in the inspection processes across all of these different industries where a lot of these companies were conducting inspections manually, and they had assets spread out around the world.
00:03:46 Eren: And these were very large physical assets that they needed to maintain in order to run their business. And it was all very manual. So as Deloitte, we were tackling this problem. I loved my work at Deloitte, but I decided that soon after, this problem could be solved very nicely using a SaaS-based product, where we could build some of these inspection models and using automation to do a faster, more efficient and safer job for these very large asset-based companies.
00:04:14 Eren: And so that's how I got into the world of enterprise inspections, starting with academic research to the startup world with augmented reality, then to the world of consulting, and then finally now building my own company-related to inspections.
00:04:29 Mishal: Yeah, that's so interesting that you went to LA to apply this technology at the intersection of AR and VR, really for the wellness, maybe entertainment spaces, and then found yourself executing on these same technologies for frontline workers and for enterprises to try to unlock some of the industrial use cases.
00:04:46 Mishal: Are there any learnings from that transition? And I guess the thing that I keep in mind is there are a lot of folks who have experiences in other sectors, maybe it's entertainment, maybe it's social media and other types of tech, but looking to make that impact for all of the tangible real world industrial use cases. Any thoughts about that journey?
00:05:03 Eren: I will say, I think, as I look at the journey that I had, the common thread for me has been following social impact, really. I've always found it fascinating to be at the center of frontier technology and social impact. And I'm sure you guys feel that way at Rhizome as well, where I got into the AR world because of my love of history, but then found myself in virtual reality for empathy and social impact, doing immersive journalism work.
00:05:32 Eren: And then, when I saw myself in the world of computer vision and AI, I quickly gravitated towards being able to use that technology to try and prevent wildfires in California or try and help victims of horrible situations like the earthquake that happened in Turkey. I've always thought of how can I use frontier technologies to have some level of social impact?
00:05:54 Eren: So I will say that's the thread that I've always followed in my journey. How can I have more of an impact? How can I add value and how can I have a social impact? So I will say for folks that are looking to figure out what they want to do, coming from a different path or industry, if you follow where the value is and where the social impact might be and where you can help the most people, that usually leads to good things.
00:06:17 Mishal: That's great. So let's dive deeper a little bit into that value that you mentioned. So today, and, we both work with utilities and other enterprise customers. So we know how complicated their data sets can be and all of their various operations where tons of activities are going on, lots of useful information is collected and different means of collecting this information.
00:06:40 Mishal: Could be visual inspections from humans who are writing down on inspection forms, could be drone-based imagery that you're getting satellite-based imagery, a company that we know well, Noteworthy, drives around with cameras on their car to capture visualizations of infrastructure. All this data is so disaggregated. What are you doing to actually make it useful for these customers? And what are some of the use cases?
00:07:01 Eren: Yeah, and I will say just to piggyback off a comment there around the different data sources. One thing we saw early on at ThreeV was that you said there are a lot of different data sources and a lot of different data types. And if we go to our customers and say, hey, we're going to force you to use our data collection mechanism, they don't really respond well to that. They're going to collect the data the way they want to and the way they see fit.
00:07:28 Eren: And so we decided early on at ThreeV that we wanted to be data collection and data source agnostic. So we are actually actively working with image-based data from both ground inspections as well as aerial inspections. We're working with vegetation management related use cases from satellite imagery. We're working with LiDAR-based point cloud data, thermal data as well.
00:07:53 Eren: So we're trying to build the top models for the industry that we're tackling, which currently is heavily focused on power and utilities, regardless of the data source. And we're trying to meet our clients in the middle, instead of trying to force them into a way of particular data collection. We found that messaging to ring true with our clients, them being excited about that. Another conversation I was having with one of our close partners, RNA Consulting, you've met as well, closely. They're amazing.
00:08:22 Mishal: Yeah.
00:08:23 Eren: We've discussed with them often, that each of these data collection mechanisms or data sources are really, uh, tools in a toolbox. Sometimes you need to use a hammer, sometimes you need to use a screwdriver, and they're meant for different purposes.
00:08:38 Eren: And so at ThreeV, we're trying to consolidate all that data and build models for all those different types of data and meet our clients where their needs are instead of trying to force a particular type of data capture mechanism on them.
00:08:51 Mishal: Right. And then a little bit further into the use cases, you mentioned vegetation management. So I imagine, and for those who don't know exactly what vegetation management is, it is the process that utilities undergo on an everyday basis. There are massive budgets for sending folks out and trimming trees that are around power lines.
00:09:09 Mishal: And so naturally, there are multiple benefits for vegetation management. Normal reliability improves when the utility does more vegetation management, but then there's also a reduction of risk both during storms and for reducing risk related to wildfires.
00:09:24 Mishal: So we'd love to maybe drill into that vegetation management use case, and then any other specific use cases come to mind, say ongoing maintenance or replacement of aging assets, so on and so forth.
00:09:36 Eren: Absolutely, absolutely. And before we jump there, would love to ask a question about Rhizome as well, understand how you guys are thinking about risk. Because at ThreeV, we're looking at different sources and modes of data, whether it's LiDAR or thermal or RGB image data. And then building models to detect specific things that might become issues in the future.
00:09:56 Eren: At Rhizome, you guys are looking at a much larger spectrum of data sources like climate data. So we'd love to learn more about that and how you guys are looking to bring in different data sources on your end.
00:10:07 Mishal: Yeah, as you can tell from my framing of the question, which was extreme weather-related, which is exactly what we do at Rhizome. Look, the more data that we have related to utility asset, the better because ultimately what our models are built to understand is what's the likelihood of failure of a wooden pole or a concrete pole within the certain proximity of dense vegetation?
00:10:30 Mishal: Is it on a hilltop that might cause a little bit more of a probability of ice buildup, especially in the Northern climates? Also transformer failures during extreme heat days. These are all of the modes of failure from climate impacts that we think about.
00:10:45 Mishal: And so yes, we do look at weather and climate data that we bring externally to a utility. But oftentimes what we're asking for is a repository just as I think you guys are doing all of the relevant assets that we need to be taking a look at and context around those assets. Right.
00:11:03 Mishal: Context could be vegetation. Context could be what was the last inspection date and what did they find during that inspection? Was a C-hook on the cross arm rusted? Was there an insulator missing between two conductors? Those things are really relevant in understanding how fragile the grid is.
00:11:20 Mishal: And at the end of the day, we're offering the ability to quantify some of the benefits or resilience benefits you get off of some of the investments. But yeah, we, I mean, starting with a repository of really high quality data really helps that cost benefit analysis a lot clearer.
00:11:36 Eren: Absolutely. And I think that's, we're trying to go with most of our utility clients and partners is, really help them get a very good base level understanding of what inventory they have at hand, because a lot of their assets have been placed there over multiple decades, some ranging back to 30, 40, 50 years.
00:11:54 Eren: And so sometimes there might be missing data, they might not have inventory on what's where and in what condition. So really our first step and what we're trying to do for our utility customers and our partners is help them get to a level of full understanding of what's actually in the field today, what inventory they have, what the conditions are, and then hopefully feed those into larger models like yours, and take into consideration those assets, as well as climate-related data and a series of other assets.
00:12:23 Mishal: I can't wait for the first time that we get to partner together. I think that's gonna be a lot of fun, and I think we're gonna probably build some of the highest quality models in the industry related to the fragility of a utility asset, which is very cool.
00:12:35 Mishal: So just pivoting a little bit over here from the nitty gritty details of the technology is focusing on the utility customer itself. And I think you know where I'm going with this. The common sentiment is that utilities move slowly and there are maybe a couple of different frames and how you can think about this is first of all, they are large organizations, so getting them to lift a finger is pretty difficult.
00:13:01 Mishal: And so there's probably commentary you can have around how to work with the organization itself. But then also would love to hear about your experience in how utilities have been adopting your technology and what you're putting down. Are they picking up in terms of what you're selling?
00:13:18 Eren: Yeah, and I think we've been very lucky with some of the partnerships and some of the customers we've had an opportunity to interact with over the past couple of months, really. We're at the beginning of our journey, still. And I do agree with you that utilities can be complex organizations that can be slower to move.
00:13:36 Eren: I was at Deloitte, so I understand that world very well. Sometimes at Deloitte, we move a little bit slower because we like to be risk averse. We're dealing with a lot of sensitive clients and a lot of sensitive data. And so being a risk averse and not making a mistake sometimes comes to the forefront.
00:13:54 Eren: But interestingly, my experience in working with utilities, maybe because of my time at Deloitte, has been quite unique and I've really enjoyed working with them. I've actually found them to be at the cutting edge in many cases, compared to some other industries that might be risk averse.
00:14:12 Eren: When it comes to things like AI, computer vision, drones, taking a look at satellite-based imagery, working with geospatial data, I feel like utilities are really at the cutting edge and they are looking to understand these technologies and they're looking to work with companies like ours. They just want to do it the right way.
00:14:32 Eren: And sometimes their time horizons, to quote the Lord of the Rings, like Ents to humans, we're just operating off of different time scales sometimes and that can be challenging for startups like ours, that are trying to manage operating cash flow on any given day.
00:14:47 Eren: I think they want to work with us, they want to innovate and they wanna do amazing things and they're often thinking at the cutting edge. We're just operating from different time scales. So I love working with utilities and I love their missions. I think they, like I said, are at the cutting edge often, but it's always not necessarily the best fit from a time horizon standpoint at the speed that startups are thinking and then utilities are thinking, which is usually in the decades.
00:15:16 Mishal: Yeah, and oftentimes their buying cycles can be opaque, but I think you're right, is when you have executive level buy-in on concepts that utilities wanna get more in-depth with such as AI, then you see that permeating throughout the organization. And then it all of a sudden becomes a priority strategy for the company. And whenever utility makes something priority strategy is when they put real dollars behind it. So I think both of us are probably seeing a little bit of that right now.
00:15:44 Eren: Absolutely, absolutely. And I will say, with utilities, it might be harder or longer to get in the door sometimes, but if you are able to get in the door and if you're able to secure a client and if you do a good job, those organizations tend to be sticky. They tend to be loyal and they tend to be long-term thinkers.
00:16:03 Eren: So really getting in the door is a little bit hard for us startups, but once you're in there, you will have an actual physical and social impact on the area that you live in or the area that they're working in, which is amazing.
00:16:16 Mishal: Yeah. And having a utility as a referenceable customer makes a bigger difference than in other sectors. One fact that I just love about the utility space is that utilities aren't competitive, right? There are natural monopolies that operate in their own service areas. They have their own little fiefdoms, and it's an extremely collaborative industry.
00:16:36 Mishal: Everyone is pushing their innovative practices onto other people. And so once you get one referenceable customer, you better believe that if they're satisfied and they're proud of it, they're going to be sharing it with their peers.
00:16:49 Eren: Absolutely. And I think that seems to be a slightly different motion than most startup SaaS companies where there's a big B2B2C motion maybe, and here, it's very word of mouth. As you mentioned, they are non-competitive with one another.
00:17:05 Eren: They sometimes like to collaborate with one another as well, but word of mouth is really big. And so if you do a really good job with a major utility, they will let others know that you are reliable and reliability is the key in this industry.
00:17:19 Mishal: That's great. So last thing that I just wanted to touch on before getting into a couple of other fun topics is you mentioned social impact being core to the company. And I'm curious because we have a challenge at Rhizome of quantifying, benefits of what we do, even though we are a climate resilience and adaptation company.
00:17:39 Mishal: Avoided risk is what the name of our game is, but quantifying that isn't the same as quantifying carbon emissions, right? You can't quantify resilience and adaptation the same way that you can carbon mitigation, for instance. How do you think about quantifying the benefits of ThreeV? I have a couple of things in mind that maybe I'll test with you in a second, but I would love to first hear your thoughts.
00:18:00 Eren: Yeah. And working with some major utilities over the course of my career, I've also found it very challenging to quantify risk or the reduction of risk specifically tied to the individual program or product that I've brought to the table before.
00:18:16 Eren: I've worked with utilities in building these business cases before, and we've always agreed that we would make slightly higher level comments like we've reduced overall risk, but not really mentioned how much and by how much related to this particular product.
00:18:32 Eren: I will, however, say that with the work that we're doing at ThreeV, there is a direct and net impact on operational efficiency and labor cost reduction or overall increase in efficiency of how many maintenance or remediation actions the business can take. And that has a direct dollar value or impact associated with it.
00:18:54 Eren: Where you can say essentially, hey, if you have a drone, as well as a couple of computer vision models that work with the drone, instead of spending a thousand hours going through 10,000 images, you can now go through a hundred images of the prioritized defects that we've identified and then send out a team in a way that's much more prioritized and sequenced effectively.
00:19:17 Eren: And so I think it's been easier for us to calculate and showcase gains in operational efficiency and cost reduction in overall operations and maintenance costs. But it's been a little bit challenging overall in identifying or quantifying exactly how much risk reduction we have tied to a particular platform.
00:19:38 Mishal: Yeah, and that's the challenge. And we're working on that at Rhizome and we have a methodology on how to do it, but then it has to be adopted by not just the utility, it's gotta be adopted by the regulator as well.
00:19:47 Eren: Absolutely, absolutely.
00:19:49 Mishal: But the one other thing that comes to mind is, for folks who are not as familiar with the regulated utility, is when you save utility dollars, you effectively save ratepayer dollars and ratepayer being any customer who pays their electric bill.
00:20:06 Eren: Absolutely.
00:20:07 Mishal: We're in a period where utility rates are increasing faster than in the last 20, 30 years because of things like electrification and electric vehicles, as well as an aging grid and utilities realizing that they need to ramp up their investments in reliability of the aging grid. So what you're doing, if I were to capture it maybe in different terms, is helping reduce bills or at least mitigate the increases in electric bills by making their data more effective and making the operational processes more effective.
00:20:40 Eren: Absolutely. We are at the end of the day trying to make the grid more reliable, more efficient, as well as cheaper for both the IOU to operate as well as us as payers to be able to pay for and get the services of.
00:20:54 Mishal: It's fantastic. And the last time that we talked, you were onboarding a new employee. So congratulations to see some early growth. One thing that I've had on my mind as we've been growing as well is what are some of the things that you wanna be intentional about as you set the company culture and you're bringing on some new folks? What kind of company are you trying to build is the question that I'm asking.
00:21:19 Eren: Yeah, no, it's a great question. And I think I have friends that have built very successful businesses with tens of millions of dollars in ARR, but they are now having difficulty with corporate culture and really setting the stage for the next level of growth within their business. And so early on we started about seven values for ThreeV and nobody on the team could really call them out by heart.
00:21:44 Eren: And so we had a workshop in our first company offsite last month and decided that we wanted to reduce the number of values that we have as a company to just three. And those are mission, mastery, as well as moral integrity. And I think those three values encapsulate really what we want to be as an organization. The mission is very important to us.
00:22:05 Eren: As I mentioned in the beginning of the company, I started this company because of everything that's gone through my career, but really last year, when there was a very large earthquake that happened in Turkey. And I had all this knowledge of drones and computer vision in my brain. And I thought, I'm unable to deploy computer vision-enabled drones right now to find or identify people close to or under the rubble in Turkey. And I felt kind of useless.
00:22:31 Eren: And so that was really the spark that led me to then start ThreeV. And so, mission, for us, is very important. We want people that, at the end of the day, want to try and save lives through our startup, through computer vision. And we try and look for that passion and that sort of fire in the people that we're hiring.
00:22:50 Eren: Secondly, mastery. We want people that are at the top of their game, that are really excited about the technology that they're building. Whether that's backend infrastructure or front-end design or user-experience research, we want people that are masters of their craft and will invest in themselves. And we, as a company, already are investing in them as well.
00:23:10 Eren: We have a specific educational and training budget that we've deployed on a monthly basis so people can take courses and trainings and certificates. And finally, moral integrity. We are trying to be a very horizontal organization, not very hierarchical. And so we want everybody to be transparent, honest, and provide 360-degree feedback to their leaders as well as their direct reports.
00:23:34 Eren: And basically every time something's going wrong in the company, transparently be able to say that and then be honest with one another, no matter what the level is. So we look for those three key values, core values. And so far with the few individuals that we've gotten on the team, we've been very fortunate, hires with those values in mind.
00:23:52 Mishal: I love that. And it's never too early to be that intentional and definitive about what you want this company to look like. We don't have all the time in the world to really set these standards and things as they grow, you even get less time for it. So I can definitely appreciate that. One last thing for you.
00:24:09 Eren: To go back to you.
00:24:10 Mishal: Yeah.
00:24:11 Eren: What are your guys’ values in Rhizome? Would love to learn more about that.
00:24:15 Mishal: Yeah, absolutely. We have really driven in on five core values, but the ones that maybe I'll highlight over here, are creativity. And creativity being that there is no one solution to the problems that we're trying to solve. I truly believe that we are solving some major societal problems that need, not just the hard technical skills, but need creativity in the way that we build solutions, collaborate with each other, how we workshop ideas.
00:24:50 Mishal: All of these things are super important, I think, get lost in translation when you're actually focused on delivering product or satisfying a customer. So just to maybe add one to yours, is creativity, is one of the values that we've chosen to focus on.
00:25:04 Eren: I love that. That’s great.
00:25:05 Mishal: So one last thing for you, what unique superpower do you have that will ultimately make ThreeV the huge splashing success that we all know it will be?
00:25:15 Eren: I think it's a combination of timing, product and team for us, really. We're really looking at the intersection of that triangle. It's not why we're called ThreeV or we have three founders. But I would say, our team is uniquely positioned. We have built many products, but we're also a bunch of ex-consultants. We've worked for and have been within the organizations that we are now actually looking to serve.
00:25:44 Eren: So we have a very good understanding of their businesses as a team. We also love and appreciate the enterprise complex sales and build journey. Taking a product from technical readiness level one to eight, nine, over the course of multiple years. Those are things that really excite us. And so that's one angle, the team, I would say.
00:26:08 Eren: The second is the product. Once again, we feel like we have unique insights into what we're building and why we're building it and who we're building it for that will help us win in the race that we're in with competitors that we're facing.
00:26:21 Eren: And then finally, timing. I think maybe five, six years ago when I started, first looking into computer vision as an enhancer for inspection processes and asset intensive industries, AI was really seen, it was still around, but it was really seen as this crazy, in the distant future that would really never happen in our lifetimes maybe even.
00:26:43 Eren: And now with the rise of ChatGPT and foundation models, I think the dream is now closer than ever and now we're talking about when AGI is going to happen. And so with that, interestingly, comes a bunch of fluff use cases that I'm seeing a lot of people try to tackle, the next agent to do ABCDE.
00:27:03 Eren: Whereas use cases like ours, risk analysis, or the ability to understand what's happening in the grid, close to real time, those are real, physical, measurable, real impact return on investment use cases that AI can power and is powering. And they're, I think, even slightly simpler than something like AGI.
00:27:25 Eren: And so a lot of the executive committees and executives that we're working with no longer see AI as this super in the future, distant thing that will one day maybe happen. They're actually seeing it as a technology that they can deploy now, today. So I think timing is on our side as well. So I would answer it in those three ways. Team, product, and timing.
00:27:46 Mishal: Well, it's not every day that a founder cites their TRL off the cuff. So perhaps that, you can also add that as your fourth superpower there. Okay, Eren, it's time for our final round, which is the speed round. You ready for this?
00:27:59 Eren: Yes, sir.
00:28:01 Mishal: All right. Here we go. Number one, what's a book you're reading or podcasts you're enjoying?
00:28:06 Eren: That's actually a great question. I'm reading multiple books right now simultaneously, as I'm sure you are as well. But currently, my favorite is The Mom Test. and The Mom Test is a book about customer development and asking the right questions to our customers so that we're not leading them on into saying that they like what we're building or they would for sure buy what it is we're providing.
00:28:30 Eren: But it's really a set of questions asked in the right way, in the right sequence to figure out exactly what the core challenges of our customers are so that we can build features or a product that are an actual solution to that. And the reason the book I think is called The Mom Test is because if you ask your mom, if you're building a business that she would buy or she likes, she would definitely say yes.
00:28:52 Eren: And so it's a play on words there, but that's one book that I found incredibly helpful for any person that's building a startup.
00:28:59 Mishal: Very nice. Number two, if you could live anywhere in the world for one year, where would it be?
00:29:04 Eren: I'm actually very fortunate enough to be living in the place that I do want to live in, which is Los Angeles, California. I would love to have that be divided into two halves between Istanbul, Turkey for six months and then LA for six months. So I'm looking to build that hybrid 50/50 lifestyle. But thankfully, I'm able to visit Istanbul quite frequently. I'm already living in Los Angeles, my dream city. So.
00:29:28 Mishal: It's a great state of affairs that you have. Okay. What's your favorite productivity hack?
00:29:35 Eren: That's an interesting one. I still take notes using my Notepad.
00:29:42 Mishal: Me too.
00:29:43 Eren: And yeah, I still set time schedules or blocks to be able to do specific tasks, but I've built out a structure on my Notepad where I take notes a specific way and prioritize items by putting a specific series of icons next to particular tasks. So I will say taking notes with a Notepad and always carrying that Notepad with me is one of my favorite productivity hacks.
00:30:08 Mishal: Oh, I love that. We have that in common. And finally, where can listeners find you?
00:30:13 Eren: I'm trying to be more active on LinkedIn. So please find me on LinkedIn, message me on LinkedIn. My email is also out there in the public, so feel free to send me an email at erena@threev.ai as well, if you have any questions.
00:30:27 Mishal: Fantastic. I will like your last post. All right, Eren, that's it for the speed round. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for this conversation and thank you to the Everywhere Ventures team for allowing us to have it.
00:30:40 Eren: Likewise, It was a pleasure being here and Mishal, thank you so much for interviewing.
00:30:45 Scott Harley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first-check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, Everywhere.VC, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, and we'll catch you on the next episode.